


Honeybee

by BlueNightmare



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe, BDSM, Blackmail, Chains, Come Eating, Dubious Consent, Dungeon, F/F, F/M, Face Slapping, Filming, Fingerfucking, Forced Orgasm, Gags, Humiliation, Lesbian Sex, Masturbation, Non-Consensual Kissing, Non-Consensual Oral Sex, Rope Bondage, Strap-Ons, Stripping, Torture, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2018-11-03 06:12:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 55,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10961352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueNightmare/pseuds/BlueNightmare
Summary: In dire need of money and with few ways to earn it, Aerith Gainsborough is forced to turn to work she had never wanted to consider. Slight AU. Heed the tags and warnings.





	1. Interview

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't the first time my first writing on a site has involved Aerith, Wall Market and a bad situation. That was five years ago, so I'm giving myself a pass for lack of imagination this time.

Aerith stood before the garish red door like a woman condemned.

She didn't want to be here. She didn't belong here. The bowels of a seedy adult store in the darkest corner of Wall Market were no place for a virgin flower girl, and the leering stares of the clientele upstairs as she hurried shame-faced into the basement had made sure that she knew it. Even here in the dim underground hallway, secluded from the ordinary patrons, it felt as if hundreds of eyes were on her, judging her. 

_Auditions_ , read the searingly pink sign above the door, almost an accusation.

Aerith hadn't needed to read it to know that she was in the right place. The upstairs attendant's directions had been clear enough, and the layout of the building was far from complex. Still, she been standing in front of the door for almost ten minutes without daring to touch the knob, her fingers anxiously twisting in her lap, mirroring the tense knots in her stomach. She had made it this far, navigated the gauntlet of drooling, catcalling men, but the only thing she wanted to do now was turn around and run home. Find another way to make money. _Anything_ but this.

Of course, if there had been another option, she would never have come here. If selling her flowers had been enough to pay for the expensive Shinra medicine her sick mother so direly needed, Aerith would have happily avoided this entire district for the rest of her life. Unfortunately, the few gil a day she made in her line of work was nowhere near enough, and nobody in the slums could afford to pay her the kind of money she needed to afford the medicine, not unless she sold drugs or sold herself.

She flatly refused to peddle drugs and the idea of selling her body was both repellent and unacceptably risky, but Aerith was a pragmatic girl. She knew that she could only play the cards her life had dealt her. Both options nauseated her to her core, but one look at her mother's suffering face reminded her that doing nothing was not an option.

She reached out a trembling hand to the brass door handle. Hesitated. Dropped her arm back to her side, her teeth worrying her lower lip. She should have been grateful to the working girl she'd met one night while fruitlessly selling flowers in the streets, a cheerful Wall Market regular who had told her of this place in an attempt to her, but now Aerith silently cursed the young woman's helpfulness. 

She wished she had never heard the name Honeybee Productions.

Her slender hand trembled as she reached for the doorknob once again, and this time she forced herself to seize it and turn, wincing as it instantly opened. She had privately hoped it would be locked. Unfortunately, it swung inward easily, granting Aerith a view of what lay within.

The instant she saw it, she recoiled.

The entire room was hopelessly, tastelessly gaudy. From the appallingly fuchsia carpet to the blood red walls draped with purple satin curtains to the vast fluorescent globe mounted in the entire gold-painted ceiling, everything in sight made Aerith's eyes hurt. Bright light washed over the vivid furniture, making the gold-threaded patterns on the plush red sofa sparkle and the varnished coffee table shine, forcing Aerith to squint as she stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. The eye-searing vista made her feel the illness of eating too many sweets, without the good parts.

At least nobody else was here. She needed a few moments to acclimatize.

The attendant she had met at the front desk had been very clear that she should sit, but Aerith hesitated as she glanced about the room, catching sight of her reflection in a full-length mirror bolted into one of the hexagonal room's vast walls. She looked as she always did, chestnut hair spilling around her lovely face, an innocent ribbon to hold her ponytail together, her long pink dress and brief red jacket old but presentable, but something about her mirror image seemed alien to her. Perhaps it was the nervous fear on her features, or perhaps her surroundings made her look almost like another woman. She looked like she didn't belong.

Of course she didn't, she reminded herself, a dull cast to her reflection's green eyes. She wasn't supposed to be here. This wasn't her world. She should never had come, and given a choice, she wouldn't have-

The red door clicked open.

A striking figure strode into the room, head raised high, and Aerith spun around to meet her, the look of a deer caught in headlights helplessly painted on her face. The woman was tall, and blonde, and beautiful, lustrous hair tied into a sharp ponytail at the top of her head, sharp blue eyes stabbing at Aerith as she closed the door behind her and locked it with a manicured fingertip. Her dress was as violently red as the decor, scandalously split open from neck to waist to show off her generous cleavage, likewise parted at the hip to offer long legs clad in sheer black stockings. Red bauble earrings, red lipstick, red heeled boots - the woman emanated sheer presence, though Aerith might have been awed by _anybody_ when her heart was thudding in her chest like a caged animal, skittering and flipping.

"I believe you were told to sit."

"Ah..." Aerith flinched at the ice in the woman's tone and hurriedly scampered to the nearest of the twin sofas, awkwardly seating herself on the plush red cushions, folding her hands in her lap and trying not to lose herself to panic. The beautiful stranger oozed strict sensuality, and Aerith knew it was no accident. She was intimately intimidating, as if she might pick Aerith's soul open with those eyes of hers and scorn what lay beneath.

"Obedience is one of the key qualities we look for in a girl." The blonde vision seated herself on the opposing sofa, set at a right angle to Aerith's, the gaudy table between them. She placed a folder onto its patterned surface, innocuously cream. "But I'll let you off this time. Your name is Aerith, correct?"

Aerith nodded nervously. She had given her name when she had made this appointment, but still felt a little dirty that a woman like her knew it.

"I am Scarlet." _Of course she is,_ Aerith sighed internally, but showed no outward sign of her resignation, still pinned beneath the woman's piercing eyes. "I handle personnel here at Honeybee Productions. I am also a performer, so you should expect to get to know me very closely if you are found to be acceptable." It was the sort of line that Aerith might have expected to be accompanied with a sultry wink, but Scarlet didn't bat an eyelid, utterly serious. "You do understand what you are in for here?"

Another nod, even more hesitant. Aerith felt her cheeks heating, and she wondered if Scarlet would approve of that, or be annoyed. "Yes," she ventured, fingers curling into her palms in her lap. "I've read the warnings. The... the details," she corrected herself, shrinking from the curious glint in Scarlet's eyes. Planet, those explicit details had made her stomach flip over, even in text, and she wasn't sure she could stand questioning on the subject.

"And you are comfortable with that? With being filmed?" 

No reprieve from Scarlet's constantly analysing eyes, and Aerith felt herself unable to lie to her. Something told her that the older woman would know if she did. "...No, but I can deal with it."

Scarlet stared at her for another long moment. Then, mercifully, she lowered her gaze, opening the folder on the table, taking up the pen sheathed within and and checking a box on the first page. Ruby lips quirked into a smile. "Acceptable. Our customers might enjoy your reluctance. I won't deny you're pretty enough for us, either. You're 20, correct?"

"Yes, ma'am." Aerith's answer came automatically, but she quickly regretted it as Scarlet's eyes lifted and narrowed. "Er... Miss Scarlet?" she hurriedly amended, dropping her own gaze to her folded hands. Planet, this alone was nerve-wracking. How could she really think she was up to this if she was falling apart during the interview?

"Hmm. 'My lady' will do, if you must address me." Scarlet's frown remained, but she returned her eyes to her work. "I am supposed to ask if you are a virgin, but girls seldom give an honest answer to that question, so I won't bother. I'm sure that a 20-year-old slum girl hasn't made it this far without opening her legs a few times, anyway."

Aerith almost choked, blood and heat rushing to her cheeks. Shame had tinged them a delicate pink to match her dress since the moment she had entered the building, but now they burned as red as Scarlet's dress. "I-I'm... no!" she spluttered, defensive words spilling out of her mouth in a heap before she knew she was speaking. "I'm.. I mean, I haven't..." Only one boyfriend. No sex. Planet, what was she _doing_ here? "I haven't done anything before," she finished, wresting control of her tongue back from her offended hurt. "You can call me a liar if you want, but I'm a... I haven't had sex."

Scarlet held Aerith's earnest gaze for a long moment, as if reading her soul through her honest green eyes.

Then, she threw her head back and laughed, a shrill squall of derision that made Aerith feel smaller than the woman's pointed heels.

"Oh, honey." Scarlet wiped at her eye as if shifting a tear, though Aerith couldn't tell if it were real or mock. Her starkly beautiful face shone with sadistic amusement as she leaned forward, piercing her with a stare. "Don't bother defending yourself. Even if you're a virgin right now, you won't be when we're done with you."

Again, that painful bluntness. Aerith averted her gaze in humiliation. There was little solace to be found in the tawdry clash of colors that made up her surroundings, but at least she didn't have to look Scarlet in the eye. 

She had known, of course, that she would be leaving her virginity behind when she left this building, if not today then when next she returned, but hearing it so bluntly hit the flower girl harder than she had imagined. Aerith had hoped that they might ease her into this, but clearly she had expected too much. This wasn't that kind of place.

If they weren't pulling any punches now, what were they going to do to her when the camera started rolling?

Her eyes darted to the door. It was locked, yes, but only from this side. She could leave right now. She would feel dirty for a day or two just from habing come here, but soon this place and this woman would be a distant, unpleasant memory. She wouldn't have to sign anything, do anything. Nobody would ever know.

Scarlet didn't miss Aerith's furtive glance at the exit, but she didn't let up for a moment, beating reality home like a stake with a hammer. "No sexual experience, then. And you want your first to be at the hands of someone you will in all likelihood never have met? They will not be gentle with you, I assure you of that. They are _paid_ to be rough."

No. Of course she didn't want that. If she had another way of making gil fast, Aerith would have taken it in a heartbeat. This was her last resort, and surely Scarlet knew it. Girls like Aerith didn't come to places like this to sell their bodies for a camera. Not unless they were beyond desperate.

"...I understand. I'll do it." She couldn't bring herself to say that she wanted it.

"Oh?" Doubt crossed Scarlet's hard face. "You're _sure_ you are up to it? I won't ask this again. We are talking about sex, with men, with other women. Bondage. Pain. Humiliation. All on camera, for semi-public distribution." She watched Aerith like a hawk, drinking in her discomfort. "You will be well paid, but this is the part where around 50% of interviewees back out. Will you be one of them?"

Aerith swallowed. "I can't back out."

Scarlet paused, then gave her a grim nod. "Very well."

Aerith wondered how many times she had heard that before. How many girls came through this room because they had no choice.

"Then prove it."

Lifting one long, nylon-sheathed leg and crossing it over her other, the front of her skirt brazenly sliding aside to reveal the upper reaches of her thighs, Scarlet planted her elbow on her upraised knee, propping her chin on a fist and peering intently at Aerith. The corners of her crimson lips curled into a smile, but it was a small, cruel one, devoid of any comfort. 

"If you are so sure you can debase yourself for an audience," she murmured, "why not start right now? Unbutton your dress."

Aerith's mouth fell open.

"Well?" Scarlet was not in a patient mood. She watched Aerith closely, like a predator waiting for her prey to make a fatal mistake. "If you are really capable of being a part of Honeybee Productions, this should be simple. I am asking nothing of you that you don't already do at home every day. Unbutton your dress, all the way, or leave."

Aerith's heart sank into her stomach. She had only been able to drag herself this far because she had thought nothing would happen to her today. She really had been a fool.

Still, Scarlet was right. If this was too much to ask of her, Aerith should never have come here. She wasn't naked beneath her dress, and this would be the _least_ they expected of her the next time. This should be simple. Easy.

Trembling hands found the topmost button of her dress, nestled between her breasts, and fumbled it open. 

She glanced to Scarlet for approval, but all she received in return was an impatient frown. Clearly, she wasn't working fast enough. Swallowing nervously, Aerith averted her eyes, trying to pretend that she was alone at home, even if the decor didn't lend itself to the delusion. That alone gave her the strength to work loose the next button down, then the next, the front of her dress parting a little more with every unfastening, each one showing off a sliver more skin, a hint of white bra and pink panties and the soft curves beneath.

When she was done, her dress laid open from chest to knee, Aerith sat back further into the sofa, hands knotting into fists on the cushions at her sides. All she wanted was to clutch her dress back together, to hide herself from Scarlet's imperious stare, but she knew she had to endure. This was nothing, she reminded herself, biting down on her lip. She was just showing a little skin, and only to another woman. No big deal.

"You'll need to invest in some nicer underwear." With a disdainful curl of her lip, Scarlet looked back down to her clipboard as if she had just surveyed something mundane. Aerith hadn't been looking forward to the lingering, lustful stare she had expected the woman to give her, but she wasn't sure if being treated like a thing made her feel any better. "We have some in stock for our performers, of course, but some of it gets rather stained. We might have you wear it another time, but we'll want you to make a good first impression."

Aerith cringed, her stomach turning, but she didn't dare protest.

"Okay." Making another check mark in a box Aerith couldn't see, Scarlet replaced her pen and closed her folder, returning her cold stare to the blushing flower girl. Her hand slipped inside her dress, delving into who-knew-where, before returning with a small black cellphone. She flicked at the screen a few times, then angled the back of the device straight at Aerith, a tiny red light on the rear indicating, to her horror, that the camera was active. "Say your name, age, and where you live for me, please."

Aerith stared, mortified, her hands instinctively pulling her dress closed around herself. "U-uh..."

"Tch." Scarlet rolled her eyes. "Look, the viewers might like the embarrassed maiden act, but this isn't for public distribution. I'm just making sure you're not wasting your time and mine. Full name, age, city sector, and open your dress back up."

She could feel an inferno dancing across her cheeks, but she lifted her shamed face to look at the camera, chewing on her lip before finally, guiltily speaking. "Aerith Gainsborough. I'm 20. I... I live in Sector 5. Under the plate."

Planet, what if someone in the slums saw her like this? Recognised her? How many of the people she saw every day looked at this kind of video when nobody else was around? Just one familiar face seeing her undressed and very possibly having sex would be worse than the whole western continent watching her. It was already going to be near impossible to look her acquaintances in the eye, and she had barely done anything yet. What if her friends found out? What if her _mother_ found out?

"Very good, Aerith from the Sector 5 slums." Scarlet's tone was clipped and cool, all business, dismissing Aerith's visible discomfort as if it meant nothing. She kept the phone camera on the flower girl, her face devoid of emotion. "I told you to part that dress for me. Do it."

Aerith flinched, her breath catching, but she obediently drew the front of her dress open once more, pursing her lips as she reluctantly revealed herself to the camera. She was still wearing more than most women wore at the beach, she told herself as her panties and bra came back into view, snugly embracing her assets in white and pink. Not that a girl who came to a place like this had any reason to care for her modesty, she reminded herself with a twinge of bitterness.

"Good," Scarlet repeated, though if the older woman was genuinely enjoying her performance, she gave no outward sign beyond that. "Now, slide your hand down your panties."

Aerith stared, stricken.

"And spread your legs open. Make sure we see everything." Scarlet stood from her sofa and moved in closer to Aerith, ensuring that the camera remained trained on the frightened brunette at all times. Completely unsympathetic, ignoring Aerith's flustered fidgeting, she placed her free hand on her hip and glared her impatience at her guest. "Go on, get on with it. Be thankful I'm letting you keep your panties on."

Aerith was a heartbeat from freaking out. She hadn't expected things to go this far, not in the _interview_. Things were moving far too fast for her to keep up with, but Scarlet was still staring at her, her annoyance growing, and for one terrible moment Aerith could see herself going home without the money she so direly needed, exchanging her dignity for nothing. Failing herself, failing her mother.

Absolutely mortified, she bit her lip and slid her hand down the front of her panties, flinching as her shaking fingertips made contact with the soft warmth of her pussy. Hating herself, she looked up at Scarlet for guidance with green eyes glittering with uncertainty, trying not to see the cellphone with its telltale red dot watching her every move.

Scarlet snapped a condescending sigh. "Yes, you have to masturbate. For real. And don't tell me you haven't done it before. Nobody's _that_ innocent."

Aerith cringed, but nodded. She had been afraid of that, but her blush intensified as it this were the first time the obscene idea had popped into her head. This woman, this cold, awful woman she had only just met, wanted her to touch herself. In front of her. On _camera_.

If buttoning up her dress and running away had been an option, she would have taken it, but of course, it wasn't. She was stuck here with Scarlet and her lewd orders, her body at the older woman's disposal. If she wanted money, she would have to make a sacrifice. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right, but this was the reality of the slums. 

Blinking back humiliated tears, she willed her fingers to begin their sordid work, tentatively stroking back and forth against herself, following familiar patterns that had once been a relaxing comfort but now seemed disgustingly wrong. It made her feel filthy now, as stained as any of the people who frequented this forsaken neighbourhood, but her body begin to respond to the temptation nonetheless, the first twinges of arousal already threading through her crotch and coiling within, urging her onward.

Planet, how was she able to get in any sort of mood in a place like this? Surrounded by garish opulence, with a stranger judging every flick of her fingers? There was only so far that pretending she was in the privacy of her bedroom would take her, and self-consciousness dug its claws into her heart, warring with her arousal and fighting it down. What was she supposed to think about to get herself going? Scarlet was attractive, yes, and it wasn't as if she hadn't looked twice at pretty girls before, but she had never masturbated to thoughts of another woman, and snide disapproval wasn't exactly something she got off on. She wouldn't even have been comfortable touching herself to visions of Scarlet in the pricavy of her own home, let alone right in front of her.

Then again, Scarlet wasn't even _looking_ at Aerith. The blonde merely watched the screen of her phone without emotion, preferring to monitor the digital version of events rather than the reality. It was as if she wasn't even in the room.

It stung, more than Aerith would have thought. She was debasing herself at this woman's command, sharing a deeply intimate part of herself against her will, and Scarlet couldn't even be bothered to _glance_ at her. She didn't exactly relish the attention when she had it, feeling like she was under a microscope, but being ignored made this feel even more clinical, more like a _transaction_.

She supposed it was, and that just stung more.

She clamped her eyes shut, blocking out the woman and her damned phone, half-expecting the older woman to order them open again. For whatever reason, she didn't, and Aerith accepted the small mercy and focused herself on her disgraceful task, trying to forget where she was and seeking out her clit with a finger. A fingertip found her target and teased it, and her thighs tensed against the plush cushions beneath her, a tiny sigh bursting from her lips without her consent. She bit down on her lip, embarrassed, holding back another involuntary whimper as she tracing weak circles around her nub, coaxing herself further along the path to degradation.

How far was she supposed to go with this? To orgasm, or just until Scarlet deemed she had humiliated herself enough? Despite her discomfort Aerith was beginning to feel herself dampen from her persistent attentions, and her observer hadn't asked her to stop yet. She cracked her eyes open a fraction, but Scarlet was still enamoured with her phone; if anything, she had stepped closer to Aerith without being heard, the phone's camera closing in on her, angled at her from above. The reminder that she was being filmed made her stomach twist, and she closed her eyes again, wishing she hadn't opened them.

"Keep going," Scarlet demanded at last, and this time there was a faint edge of lust to her cold voice, of hungry expectation. Unsure whether she should be pleased or disgusted by that, Aerith distracted herself with obedience, sliding a finger inside herself, than another, a shaking breath accompanying the intrusion as she found herself wetter than she had expected. Sticky warmth embraced her fingers, welcoming them, and she leaned her head back against the sofa, chestnut hair draping across the plush red cushions, trying to let the sensations carry her away from this place. 

This was okay. This wasn't so bad if she didn't think of the camera. Of Scarlet, standing over her in judgment. If she just lost herself in the building heat in her nethers and pushed herself further and harder, if she pretended she was doing this for her own pleasure, for her own relief, she could be done with this in a matter of minutes. Done, and moving on, and maybe going home, her mission complete for the day...

"Play with your tits," Scarlet ordered, shattering the beautiful illusion and spitting on the shards.

 _Tits._ The word lowlifes used to describe them when they accosted Aerith in the city streets, trying to buy more from her than a flower. She didn't like the word, but she knew what it meant, and she moved her left hand to obey as her right continued its furtive work, grasping her breast from beneath, clumsily groping herself as she assumed Scarlet wanted her to do. Her bra was thin and old, the white cup of cloth providing little protection from her awkwardly pressing fingertips, and she made herself squeeze, feeling her nipple grazing against her palm through the fabric as it rose to attention, heeding her arousal. 

She didn't often play with her breasts while she masturbated, only when nothing else was working for her, and it felt needless now, an intrusion forced on her for another's pleasure. She wondered if this was how it would feel when they made her be with a man, fumbling with her like a toy, pushing buttons they didn't understand for their own enjoyment, using her.

Why the thought spurred on the pressure building within her instead of throwing it off-course, she didn't know. A mistake, surely. Wires crossed in the heat of pleasure, making her want what she didn't want. She ignored it, pushing herself towards the edge where she wouldn't have to _think_ , making token passes at her breast with one hand, grinding her thumb against her clit and pumping her fingers in and out of herself with the other. She pictured other hands on herself, belonging to no-one, existing only to do what _she_ wanted, running over her body in firm, hard trails, their breath as ragged as hers as she tightened around her fingers, whimpered into the air...

The orgasm wasn't her best, not even close, but it kicked the breath from her body and left her sagging against the sofa, dizzily losing herself in a cloud of bliss as hot wetness soaked her hand and her panties.

"Well done." Scarlet didn't even have the decency to wait until the pleasant haze of orgasm had subsided. The spell broken, Aerith opened her eyes to find the woman's phone shoved in her face, the red dot still watching her. Taking in her sweat-stained brow, her pleasure-fogged eyes, the pink flush in her cheeks, all of those things that had once been private. For only her and those she might one day allow into her world.

It was as if Scarlet were taking them for herself, ripping them from Aerith's weakened grasp and storing them in her little black box to share with whoever she pleased. Violation wracked her, but she closed her eyes again, trying not to let it get to her. This was the least she was signing up for. "That's... enough, right?"

"That's enough." Was that a tiny thread of approval in Scarlet's voice? "Clearly you're up for this after all. We have an arrangement, Aerith Gainsborough of Sector 5. Honeybee Productions will give you a chance."

Relief chased off the feelings of violation, at least for now. She didn't doubt that they would be back later, that they would become a familiar companion, but for now she could at least know that she hadn't done this for nothing. She had degraded herself, but she now had a job. A job she didn't want, but a job that would pay for the medicine her mother needed.

She cringed. No, she didn't want to think about her mother now, in a place like this, her dress opened and her juices slicking her fingers. Didn't want to think about how disappointment she would be. "Um..."

"Button up your dress." Tucking her phone back inside her clothing, Scarlet pursed her lips as she looked down at Aerith, as if she were something filthy. As if it wasn't her fault that she _was_. "And take your panties off. Leave them here. I'm assuming you don't plan to wear them home?"

Her underwear was soaking wet, hopelessly ruined. Aerith hurriedly buttoned her dress, hiding herself away beneath the safety of her familiar clothing, then quickly tugged her panties down her legs, hesitating as the sodden pink fabric brushed against the seat of the sofa. "Oh..."

"Don't worry about the sofa. It's seen so many fluids, it's a miracle it even looks halfway clean." As matter-of-fact as ever, Scarlet leaned forward and plucked the panties out of Aerith's hands, showing no concern for the smell or dampness, nor for the disgust flitting across the flower girl's face as she stared down at the comfortable cushions, sickened. "That should be all for today, Aerith. We'll be in touch."

Aerith wasted no time in standing, curling her arms around her body as if she were still exposed. The cooling wetness slicking her thighs hadn't begun to seep through her dress yet, but it still felt unpleasant, dirty. "May... may I have something to clean up...? Or, um... some other..." She glanced at the hand clutching her surrendered panties at Scarlet's side, unwilling to say it out loud. Planet, why was _that_ embarrassing her? She'd just... masturbated in front of her, for heaven's sake.

"I don't think that's necessary." Scarlet was already turning from Aerith, returning to seat herself on the other sofa as if nothing had happened, snatching up her pen and scribbling on the page within her folder. "Your dress is long enough. Nobody will know you aren't wearing underwear except you and any up-skirt peepers you meet on the way home. Unless you want these back?"

Aerith's averted glance of disgust was answer enough. 

Placing her pen down, Scarlet fixed her gaze on Aerith, those sharp eyes glacial. "If you want to clean yourself, you can use that pretty pink ribbon in your hair. Most of the cloths around here have more cum on them than you do. The sweet virgin look no longer suits you, anyway." She returned her eyes to her folder, turning the page and scribbling something lengthy. "That aside, I will see you soon. You may leave the way you came in."

Dismissed. Like she was trash to be thrown away now that she had served her purpose. Aerith nodded numbly, starting towards the red door she had so feared, her face twisting as she realised just how hard it would be to ignore the wetness gracing her thighs. The feeling haunted her every step, a constant reminder of what she had done. Surely she wasn't supposed to walk home like this?

Still, she made no move to touch her hair ribbon. There was no way she could use her ex-boyfriend's final gift to her for the sordid purpose Scarlet had suggested. She would prefer to walk the whole way home like this than soil the precious trinket any further.

Next time, she told herself, grasping the doorknob and turning, she would leave the ribbon at home. It had already witnessed enough.


	2. Introductions

"Welcome back."

This time, Scarlet was already waiting for Aerith in the audition room as the flower girl inched through the dreaded red door, seated on one of the plush sofas at the middle of the gaudy chamber, cradling a glass of red wine in crimson-nailed fingers. Ruby lips offered a passionless smile, blue eyes distant and cold despite the intimate link the two women now shared, as if they were strangers.

It was as if she had stepped right out of Aerith's memories, every detail of her past self effortlessly replicated. The same daring red dress clung to her shapely frame, the same bauble earrings dangling from her ears, the same black stockings sheathing her neatly crossed legs, tipped by the same dangerous heels. Her precisely coiffed blonde locks glimmered in the dazzling light, shifting only faintly as she raised her glass to her lips and fixed Aerith with a stare through the rim. If someone had told Aerith that Scarlet hadn't moved at all in the last six days, the flower girl might have believed it.

The familiarity was anything but reassuring. 

Closing the door behind her, Aerith took a deep breath of the sickly-sweet scented air to steady herself, holding her head as high as fear and shame would let her. She, too, wore much the same as she had the last time she had been here, if only to keep from soiling a second set of clothing, metaphorically or literally. Her long pink dress and warm red jacket had once been among her favorite items in her admittedly sparse closet, comfortable and comforting, but now, no matter how many times she washed them, they felt irredeemably dirty. They had spent the last few days shoved to the back of her closet, out of sight and mind, but today there had been nothing she could wear but these.

 _Maybe these are my whore clothes,_ she had bitterly suggested to herself that morning, and the words echoed in her head now, accusing her. 

That was why she had left her precious ribbon at home this time, replacing it with a simple black hairtie. The pink decoration had been a constant companion since the day her boyfriend had given it to her, a reminder of the time they had shared before his assignment on duty, and Aerith couldn't help but be perpetually aware of its absence, its replacement gripping her ponytail tighter than she liked, reminding her of what she had left behind. She missed the soft touch of her accessory, but she simply couldn't bring herself to wear it here again. It made her feel like he was watching over her, witnessing her degrade herself.

Forcing those thoughts into the darkest corners of her mind, Aerith swallowed, gathered her courage, and spoke. "Good morning." 

Scarlet nodded curtly in return. Sipping at her wine, she crooked a finger in Aerith's direction, bidding her closer. "Come. Sit. I have a contract for you to sign before we go any further."

Aerith approached, but reluctantly, remembering all too clearly what Scarlet had implied about the cleanliness of these sofas last time. Given the choice between sitting beside Scarlet or choosing the other sofa - the one she had defiled herself on a week ago - she agonized, but finally chose the former, lowering herself onto the seat already occupied by the statuesque blonde, not sure whether to expect a rebuke or a hand on her thigh.

To her relief she received neither. Scarlet didn't react, other than by sliding a piece of paper along the table in front of her, a pen resting on top for her to take. A contract, Aerith confirmed as she peered at the crisply printed words, squinting against the harsh fluorescent light, couched in legal terms but understandable. A commitment to making one video for Honeybee, and to be paid enough gil in return to buy her mother's medicine for an entire month, with a little bit left over. Terms, conditions, consent arrangements, things that made Aerith's skin crawl, but nothing that she didn't already know.

A dotted line at the bottom, awaiting her signature.

"It's not a bad deal for a first-timer," Scarlet observed, watching her closely. The scent of her perfume was sweet, sharp enough to make Aerith's nose twitch. Was that what she had smelled when she had entered for all the way across the room. "Lucky you," the blonde went on, pausing to sip her wine and raise an eyebrow. "The boss must have liked your 'audition'."

 _Audition...?_ It took Aerith a moment to figure out what Scarlet meant, and the realization made her heart and stomach lurch. The video. The phone footage of her, dress unbuttoned, legs spread, touching herself. Somehow it hadn't occurred to her that Scarlet might actually _share_ the wretched video with someone else, that someone she had never even met had watched her do those things to herself, and the reality hit her like a sledgehammer, leaving her reeling. 

Still, she forced herself not to react, staring down at the contract until the words blurred, her fingers whitening around the pen. She couldn't show her distress. A lot more people were going to see a lot more of her, and if Scarlet still had doubts about her, the last thing she wanted to do was prove them correct. Not when her mother's desperately needed medicine was at stake.

She scrawled her name on the dotted line before either of them could change their mind.

"Excellent." Scarlet took the contract from her, looked it over, and slipped it into her ever-present folder, then left it behind on the table with her wine glass and stood, urging Aerith to rise with the crook of a finger. The flower girl did so, her heart pounding, her vivid green eyes trying to read Scarlet's ice-blue ones and finding nothing of her intentions within.

Then Scarlet's hands darted between Aerith's breasts, tearing at the topmost button of her dress, and there was no more need to wonder.

She didn't mean to pull away, but the forceful push of knuckles against her chest startled her into resisting, her hands flying up to defend herself before she could process what was going on. That earned her fingers a stiff slap from Scarlet, the older woman's hands pursuing her no matter which way she twisted, capturing their prey and working the button loose from its hole. "Hold still."

"W-what are you doing...?" Aerith stopped resisting, reluctantly letting Scarlet's hands spider their way down her front, but her cheeks burned in shame as those eager fingers pulled her dress open, parting it all the way down to her waist. There was no passion in Scarlet's mechanical motions, but it still took all of Aerith's willpower to keep her hands fisted at her sides as pink fabric was ruthlessly yanked open around her breasts, baring what lay beneath.

"I see you took my advice."

She flinched as Scarlet peered closely at her bra, hating being ogled so blatantly but with no option but to let her. The undergarment was the nicest she owned, white and lacy, patterned with pink flowers and crowned with a tiny ribbon between the cups. It fit her all too nicely, lifting her breasts higher than she liked, as if asking for them to be touched. She had planned to wear it the first time she and her boyfriend had... 

But _that_ had never happened, and now she was wearing it _here_ instead, where it made her feel less like a pretty young woman and more like a whore tarting herself up for the inevitable.

She really hadn't wanted to wear it here, but Scarlet had demanded something nice, and it was the nicest bra in her drawer by a long shot. She wasn't about to risk her underwear being found wanting again, not when the likely alternative was to be made to wear used lingerie the company provided for her instead. Ick.

"Still going for the sweet virgin aesthetic, hmm? Well, I suppose some of our viewers will enjoy that." Thankfully satisfied with what she saw, Scarlet let her hands roam lower, warm palms sliding down Aerith's sides to her hips. The intimacy was unwelcome, leaving the flower girl intensely uncomfortable, but she bit down on her lip and endured it as those insistent fingers slipped down her thighs, her knees...

Grasped the hem of her dress in both hands and yanked her skirt up to her thighs, exposing everything that lay beneath.

Aerith yelped, caught off-guard, but there was no pulling away from Scarlet's grasp, the older woman's hands firmly gripping her hips and pinning her bunched-up skirt to her waist. All she could do was stand there, mortified and exposed, as Scarlet scrutinised her panties as if Aerith were a mannequin in a lingerie store. They were a match for the bra, flowery and lacy and white, and Aerith braced herself for ridicule, more self-conscious of her choice than ever.

"A set, hmm?" The scorn she had anticipated didn't come. Scarlet seemed to approve, abruptly letting Aerith's still-buttoned skirt fall back around her legs. Blushing fiercely, Aerith breathed a sigh of relief as the older woman stepped back; she wasn't used to being _handled_ like this, manipulated at will, and she didn't like it.

"Don't worry." Scarlet's replica of a smile almost looked genuine. "I'll make sure you get them back when we're finished this time. I'm sure you'll need to wash them, but you will need to get used to that in this line of work."

Aerith just nodded numbly. What else could she do?

"Button yourself back up." Taking up her folder and the contract within, Scarlet stepped away from Aerith and the sofas, gliding across to the door. "It'll be undone again soon enough, but our customers like to see the girls undressed on-camera. You _are_ ready for your first shoot, yes?"

 _No._ Aerith wanted nothing more than to scream the word in Scarlet's face, but if that had been an option she would have done it long before now. She kept her eyes lowered as she buttoned her dress up from the waist, her hands trembling, trying not to dwell on just _whose_ hands would be on these buttons next. Fear of what was coming ate at her, hollowing her out, but she made herself nod and tell the lie she needed to tell, though it felt like feeding herself to the beast. "...Yes. I'm ready."

"Then come." The red door opened and Scarlet stepped out into the hall, her folder clasped to her chest, motioning for Aerith to follow, like a siren guiding her to her death. "It's time you paid your first visit to our studio."

~ ~ ~

'Dungeon' would have been a more appropriate word for the room behind the door at the end of the hall.

It wasn't that it was dark, precisely. Stage lighting mounted on poles around the room ensured that all but the distant corners of the chamber were bathed in light, shunting the basement gloom into the edges of Aerith's perception, but the dazzling illumination only laid bare what this place really _was_. The floor was bare concrete filthy with a myriad of stains, the walls oppressively dull brickwork, the ceiling dotted with a myriad of steel loops bolted to its otherwise featureless surface. Some of these loops were harmlessly empty, but some dangled thick steel chains into the room, trailing ominously in the cool air, promising unthinkable things that made Aerith shiver.

Everywhere she looked, there awaited some new horror. Cages. Racks. Tables. Benches. Restraints built into everything, leather and metal and rope fashioned to string up and hold down. An array of terrible tools hanging from hooks on the walls, waiting to be used - whips and crops, cuffs and gags, things Aerith couldn't have named and didn't _want_ to know about. Any of it could be used on her today, she realised with a sickening twist in her gut, the very thought making her feel alarmingly faint. This wasn't a sightseeing tour. She was signing up for this, and Scarlet hadn't shown an inclination to go easy on her just because she was a first-timer-

"Well now, who's _this_?"

The feminine purr startled Aerith out of her thoughts. She whipped her surprised gaze up in search of the voice's owner, wincing as the glare struck her eyes. Someone was already in here?

Even aware, it took her a few moments to find her amid the violent clash of light and shadow. She was huddled beneath one of the light poles - no, there were _two_ of them, she corrected herself as her eyes adjusted, one hunched over the other. Both of them were women... and neither, Aerith noticed with a rush of heat to her cheeks, were wearing much in the way of clothing.

One of them, sitting on her knees on the dirty concrete, was clad in a sheath of sinfully tight rubber, a shiny black second skin that hugged her voluptuous body from the swells of her breasts to the valley of her crotch. All else was left bare to the light - her legs, her hips, the most generous portion of her ass and a vast swathe of her cleavage - as if modesty were a joke to her. She was much older than Aerith, perhaps in her mid-thirties, midnight black hair flowing down her back, straight and glossy. Mischievous brown eyes studied the slum girl, pink lips curving into a smile half-welcoming, half-predatory.

The other girl wore nothing but the rope that bound her naked body, the thick pink rubber ball strapped between her lips and the dripping sweat sheening her ivory skin.

She was close to Aerith's age, but with a maturity to her pretty face that made her seem older, her dark blue eyes shrewish and sharp, her chin-length hair dyed to match them almost perfectly. Her body was slight, her breasts small and hips narrow, but evidently she was _very_ flexible; her arms were tied behind her back so strictly that her elbows were made to touch, the snug binding of her wrists rendered a needless formality. More coils of thin, rough rope pinned her upper arms to her sides and wrapped around her chest, squeezed her breasts, snared her legs bent, hugged her waist and dived between her legs, biting deep into her-

Aerith flushed, cringing in sympathetic discomfort. Planet, what had they _done_ to this girl?! She knew she was staring but she couldn't bring herself to tear her eyes away, horrified fascination overriding burning embarrassment. Scarlet had mentioned the possibility of being tied up, but... but was _this_ what she meant!? Was _she_ going to end up like this, bound in so many ropes she would struggle to breathe, lewdly tormented and sweating from strain?

It wasn't as if she could say no, but stars, she hoped not. This was too much. She could be adventurous, but not _that_ adventurous. Not huge-rubber-ball-in-her-mouth adventurous, not rope-slicing-through-her-pussy adventurous, not-

" _Hmhh_."

The indignant sound broke the spell on Aerith, snapping her back to reality to find the blue-haired girl staring right back at her. Her eyes were savagely narrowed, her jaw clenched tight around her thick rubber gag in anger. She had gawked for far too long, Aerith realized, and the girl clearly did _not_ appreciate the attention. 

The abashed look the flower girl gave the captive did little to appease her; she leaned forward as the other woman worked on untying the ropes pinning her arms, still glaring furiously, bristling for a fight. "Vuh heh yyuh luhih ah?!" she snarled at Aerith, the drool-slick gag slurring her words into a wet, incomprehensible mess of syllables.

"Oh, hold still for a moment." With an exasperated sigh, the dark-haired woman abandoned her attempts on the other girl's bound arms and reached up to unbuckle the straps of her gag instead, lifting the rubber ball out of her mouth and placing it neatly on the floor. "There. Continue, dear."

The blue-haired girl winced as the ball parted with her lips, drool spilling down her chin as she worked her jaw, but she did not stay silent for long. "Who the hell is this?" she demanded, mercifully shifting her angry gaze to Scarlet for the moment. "Hasn't she ever seen a pair of tits before?"

"Irida, Aerith. Aerith, Irida. And no, I'd be very surprised if she had seen tits other than her own before." Scarlet barely gave the girl a glance, her voice flat and deadpan, as if this sort of behavior was completely in-character for 'Irida'. "Aerith is new here, so forgive her doe-eyed innocence. It won't be an issue for long. Aerith, by way of introduction, Irida and Laurin here are long-term performers. They've been in more of our films than you've had birthdays. You girls don't have to like each other, but you may have to perform with each other in future, so I advise you not to antagonize one another _too_ much."

She stepped deeper into the dungeon, heels clicking against the concrete, leaving Aerith at the door with her head spinning. Both Irida and Laurin were looking at her with calculating expressions that the flower girl _really_ didn't like, and not knowing what else to do, she laced her fingers together and stood awkwardly in place, keeping her eyes lowered so she wouldn't need to look at anyone or anything else.

"So you're filming with her today?" Laurin seemed all too interested in the idea, and Aerith could feel those warm brown eyes on her without needing to look. "Does the poor dear know what she's in for? She looks like a chocobo in an allemagne nest."

"Yes, when Leon comes back, we're filming." Scarlet didn't turn around, occupied with perusing a rack of implements that Aerith couldn't bring herself to glance at. "And yes, Aerith has read the job description and the contract, so she had better be ready. If she isn't... well, genuine fear makes good film, and she will have only herself to blame."

The words were spoken to Laurin, but there was no doubt that they were meant for Aerith, and every one of them hit home. The flower girl only wished she had the luxury of waiting until she was "ready" for this. Every nerve in her body was screaming at her to get out before something happened that she couldn't take back, before they restrained her and escape became impossible.

Still, even now, she didn't. Aerith never planned to tell her mother about _any_ of this, of course, but she simply couldn't face her if she ran away now. Not that facing her after spending the day in a sex dungeon would be any easier, but she simply couldn't back out of this. She would never forgive herself if she did. Every cough and wheeze from her mother's lips would be a knife through her caring heart.

"So she's about to get fucked on camera for the first time, huh?" Irida seemed to delight in Aerith's obvious discomfort, gleefully rubbing her face in it. Was the girl always this cruel to people, or had Aerith offended her that much with her curious stare? "Can I watch? I want to see the moment she breaks. That's always fun."

"Irida, come now." There was a stern note of warning in Laurin's pleasant tone as she studiously worked at untying the knots at the blue-haired vixen's elbows. "The poor girl is frightened enough as it is. Do I need to gag you again?"

Irida opened her mouth to answer, but Scarlet cut her off before she could speak, still not bothering to turn around and face them. "You can watch if you're quiet, Irida. One squeak out of you and I'll make you pay for it. You know how. Am I understood?"

"...Yeah," Irida responded sullenly, cut down to size in an instant. Aerith didn't miss the tiny twist of fear in the naked girl's voice.

"Good." Scarlet turned back towards them at last, something metallic clinking with her movement, and Aerith instinctively lifted a dreading gaze to find it. The sight of a pair of thick metal handcuffs hanging from the blonde woman's cocked finger made her wish she hadn't, and her displeasure must have been plain on her face, because Scarlet rolled her eyes in return, snatching the cuffs neatly into a palm. "Oh, don't look at me like that," she snapped, high heels carrying her closer. "Just be thankful we aren't starting with the rope bondage. Unless you'd _like_ to end up like Irida here? I can arrange that."

Somehow Aerith found the wit to keep herself from looking back at the blue-haired girl and her angry eyes, but visions of rope biting into skin were already burned into her mind so deeply that she could almost feel it grinding against her own. She shivered, swallowing hard. "N-no."

"Another time, then." There was a grim promise in those cold blue eyes, but Scarlet moved on from the topic swiftly, touching a fingertip to her ruby lips in thought as she halted just before Aerith. "Then back to my original plan. I'm going to have you-"

The rest of her sentence was drowned out by the sudden groaning of rusty hinges.

Aerith spun around, her heart flipping, as the dungeon door squealed open at her back. Hasty backward steps opened distance between her and the man who stepped through the gateway, but she still caught a whiff of stale cigarette smoke as thick leather boots slapped against the cellar floor. lazily slamming it shut behind him.

"Leon." Scarlet favored him with an icy expression, lips taut. "You're late."

"Only by two minutes." The man shrugged, not fazed in the least by the cold reception. A complete contrast to the glamorously dressed Scarlet, Leon was scruffy and rough, greasy brown hair hanging down the back of his leather jacket in a messy ponytail, listless blue eyes leering at Aerith as yellowed teeth grinned within ragged stubble. "So this is the new girl, huh? Aeris, right?"

"Aerith." Scarlet corrected him before the flower girl could open her mouth. "The sooner you get the camera set up, the sooner you'll be properly introduced. You've passed off the footage of the other two?"

"We do have names, you know," Laurin observed, but there was no sign that anyone other than Aerith had paid the slightest attention.

"Yeah, the vid'll be ready by this time tomorrow." Leon smirked crookedly. "I think it'll be a good one. Might just buy a copy myself. Laurin's really good with the ropes these days."

Irida snorted, shooting an irritated glare over her shoulder at the rubber-clad brunette. "If she was that good, she'd be smart enough to get this rope out of my cunt _before_ working on my arms. You trying to saw me in half?"

"I know _exactly_ what I'm doing." Laurin didn't look up from her work, a faint smile quirking her lips as she picked at the knots at Irida's shoulders. "You can put up with it a little longer. The rope is probably soaked by now, anyway."

As a frequent visitor to the sordid sprawl of Wall Market, Aerith was accustomed to vulgar bluntness concerning certain body parts and their functions, but hearing it from the mouths of other women left her even more awkward and ill at ease. She felt like a child among adults, her innocence a millstone hanging around her neck, reminding her that she didn't belong here. 

Knowing that she was about to receive an education didn't make her feel any better.

For the most part, they ignored her as they prepared the scene for what was to come. Leon busied himself with setting up an expensive-looking video camera on a tripod, carefully angling it according to Scarlet's orders, while Laurin hauled Irida out of its view and guided her back down to the floor once they were behind its scope, ensuring that they would have a good view of proceedings while keeping them safely out of the picture. All the while Aerith watched, silently willing them to take just a little bit longer, to have misplaced something vital without which they couldn't continue, for them to send her away for the day and give her just a little longer to mentally ready herself.

"That should do it," Scarlet asserted, and Aerith's heart sank to her knees.

She was given little time to stew on it further. "Stand here," Scarlet commanded her with the authority of a general, and with no choice but to obey, she reluctantly approached the spot Scarlet had indicated, feeling every inch a criminal walking to her execution. She stood before the camera now, and though it wasn't yet turned on, she could imagine thousands of eyes watching her as intently as the cameraman and the other two girls were at this very moment, hungry to see _more_ of her.

This was it. No going back. This was going to happen.

Again she fought down the urge to run away. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, she told herself as Scarlet left her there and stepped off to the side. Maybe she was worrying too much. People _liked_ sex, didn't they? It was supposed to be a good thing, not an ordeal to be afraid of, and masturbation had never been anything but pleasant for her, if a little guilt-inducing... 

But this wasn't just sex. It was sex with a stranger, in a _dungeon_ , in front of observers and a camera recording her every move. There would be no tender, loving hands to caress her body, no adoring kisses, no joyful sharing of climax, as she had imagined so many times with her fingers between her legs. Instead, there would be handcuffs and gags and the uncaring hands of somebody she didn't know, tools of pleasure and pain surrounding her like a cage, intimidating her even if she were fortunate enough to avoid having them used on her. This wasn't how she had wanted to lose her virginity. This was the opposite of it, a filthy, degrading transaction in which she had no real choice.

She was almost in tears by the time Scarlet returned, eyes lowered and hollow, but the blonde woman didn't bother to check in with her. Red-nailed fingers took rough hold of Aerith's chin and lifted, forcing her eyes to meet Scarlet's calculating blue gaze, and the flower girl felt hot breath dancing across her fear-paled face, wine-sweet and smothering. Hands knotting nervously in her lap, she stared back at the older woman, not knowing what to do-

Red lips darted forward to capture hers, pressing a crushing kiss against her mouth.

Her eyes flew open, shock freezing her rigid as her lips were forcefully enveloped by soft, wet warmth, rational thought fleeing her head. She'd been kissed before, but never by a woman, never against her will, never like _this_ , rough and forceful and selfish, and the combination of sensations and emotions left her reeling, violated and overwhelmed. There was nothing loving about the kiss; it was about taking, inflicting, and by the time Aerith came to her senses it was over, ended with a ruby smirk and a flash of knowing in cold blue eyes as Scarlet drew back and licked her lips clean.

"That will do nicely." Pleased with the flower girl's flushed cheeks and incoherent stammers, the blonde kept her eyes fixed on her, leaving her nowhere to hide. "In the future we may tell you to behave a certain way for a particular video, but this time I want your genuine, natural reactions. The viewers do so love a frightened virgin."

"Virgin." Irida snorted her disbelief, but a tug on her elbow ropes brought the blue-haired vixen into line, Laurin shaking her head in dismay behind her.

"Or an actress good enough to fake it." Scarlet leaned in close to Aerith once more, silently threatening the shell-shocked brunette with a second unwanted kiss, but the assault she dreaded never came.

The insistent pressure of hard rubber against her lips, the thick pink ball still disgustingly slick with Irida's spit, made her wish it had.

"Open up."


	3. Shackles

The ball gag sat clumsily between Aerith's teeth, propping her jaw wide open around its shiny pink bulk, tasting of rubber and Irida's lingering spit. 

She hated it. The horrid thing left her humiliatingly powerless to speak or swallow, drool threatening to seep from her straining lips whenever she tried to make a sound, and even silent the flower girl was constantly conscious of the rising level of saliva beneath her tongue, waiting to flow down her chin the moment her concentration lapsed. If she could have spit it out she would have, but the gag's leather strap kept it bound into her mouth, buckled behind her head to keep it snug and tight. It was an utterly degrading experience, and by the look in the eyes of everyone else in the room, that was much of the point.

"Pink is _definitely_ her color." Eagerly taking in the scene from her place on the sidelines, Laurin made no effort to hide her interest, her dark eyes aflame with predatory desire. Her fingers were still busily working at the rope binding Irida's arms behind her back, expertly unpicking the complicated knots, but it was obvious that her attention was no longer on the blue-haired girl. "Tell me her underwear is pink too."

"Not today, I'm afraid." Scarlet had backed away from Aerith, stepping close to Leon to view the flower girl from the camera's perspective, but the helpless brunette could still feel the warmth of the older woman's kiss on her tight-stretched lips, the lingering scent of sweet perfume clinging stubbornly to her nostrils. "The panties she wore to the interview were pink, but she made a mess of them. I haven't given them back yet."

Various eyebrows rose. Aerith flushed in shame, dropping her eyes to her boots.

"Sluuuut." She knew it was Irida without needing to look, the girl's cruel voice jabbing like a knife. 

"What's _wrong_ with you today?" Laurin had the same question Aerith did, dark eyes interrogating the back of Irida's blue-haired head as she finished untangling the ropes from around the girl's arms. "We all had to do things like that our first time here. Nobody becomes a Honeybee without cumming all over one of those nice red sofas, right? I know I did."

Irida scowled but didn't answer, yanking her newly liberated arms out of Laurin's reach.

"Come on, now." Scooting around to Irida's front, Laurin began to work on untying the rope clutched about the younger girl's waist, ignoring the hot little gasp as rough rope rubbed in sensitive places. "Did Aerith do something to offend you? I'm sure she'd ask the question herself if she didn't have that gag in her mouth. Is it because she's prettier than you?"

The last thing Aerith wanted was to look up right now, but the unpleasant sensation of saliva seeping out around her gag, seconds from spilling down her chin and onto her dress, made her instincts kick in. She lifted her head before she could disgrace herself further... only to find Irida staring straight back at her, hatred seething in her dark blue eyes.

"You think _she's_ prettier than me?!" The girl choked out a disbelieving laugh, her scorn only tempered by a harder-than-necessary tug of the rope against her pussy that made her teeth clench and voice hitch. "M-maybe you need glasses, old lady," she hissed in retaliation, countering physical aggression with verbal. "She's just... _look at her_. She's not like us. She doesn't belong here. You can tell she thinks she's _above_ all this."

"She wasn't above masturbating on camera, so let's just drop it." Scarlet shot a terse glare at Irida as she returned to the fiercely blushing Aerith's side, and the blue-haired girl immediately shut up as if someone had pressed her off switch. "We're about to start, so I don't want to hear another peep out of either of you. Aerith, give me your hands."

She did, though she knew what was coming, and her instant reward was the intimidating snap of cold metal handcuffs locking snugly around her wrists, imprisoning them in front of her. They ground uncomfortably against the bones of her wrists, tightened a notch further than was necessary to confine her, but she dared not complain. It was likely much more comfortable than the chafing ropes Irida was suffering through, so she bit down on her gag and bore it.

Then, a rusty groan filled the basement as Scarlet reached up high, seizing one of the many chains danging from the ceiling and hauling it down in front of Aerith. The shrieking rasp of protesting metal made her wince, but Scarlet didn't seem troubled by the piercing sound, drawing the chain down to meet Aerith's restraints... and looping a sturdy padlock through the lowest link and the chain between the cuffs, neatly linking the two together.

A nod to Leon, a tug of a lever, and the chain abruptly retracted towards the ceiling of the dungeon.

The gag muted Aerith's yelp of surprise to a whimper, but her panic as her cuffed wrists were yanked high above her head was plain for all to see. The pulley forced her to stand on her very tiptoes, stretching her arms to her limits, and while it wasn't quite painful, her tensing muscles were already warning her of discomfort to come if she remained like this for long. She huffed a stricken breath through her nose, averting her eyes from Irida's malicious grin, reminding herself over and over that she was capable of this, that she had agreed to this-

"That should be enough for her first time." Scarlet clearly had no intention of waiting for Aerith to accustom herself. Her voice issued from close by, but Aerith could no longer see her; her own arms filled her peripheral vision, blocking her view of her surroundings and limiting her field of sight to what was right in front of her. As if being chained in place and gagged hadn't left her feeling vulnerable _enough_. "We can go to heavier restraints next time," she heard the blonde woman muse, heels clicking their way around her, and Aerith didn't know if she liked _heavier restraints_ or _next time_ less. "We'll give our audience something to look forward to for later. Leon, are we ready?"

The unkempt cameraman responded with a thumbs up, his eye never budging from the viewfinder of his camera.

 _Ready._ Aerith let her eyelids drift shut, as if she might hide herself from the camera by denying its existence. _She_ wasn't ready, and never would be. Decent girls were never _ready_ for something like this, but she was shackled to it three times over - by the actual shackles closed around her wrists, by the contract she had signed her name to, and by the cold reality that had brought her here in the first place. She was stuck with this, ready or not. If what she had heard in the slums was true, she had been lucky to avoid sex work for as long as she had.

"Excellent." Scarlet strode back into view as Aerith reluctantly opened her eyes again, the older woman joining Irida and Laurin a few feet behind Leon and his expensive camera. By now Irida was almost entirely untied, but she had made no move to clothe herself - in fact, Aerith hadn't even seen any clothing lying about for her to dress herself in, and she wasn't about to look closer. The four of them were gathered in one spot now, all of them watching her with expressions varying from analytical dispassion to gleeful sadism to heated anticipation. Their attention was too much for Aerith to take, embarrassing her into fevered blushing, and they hadn't even properly started yet.

"I'll come in after thirty seconds." Scarlet was still speaking to Leon, evidenced by the cameraman's slow nod, but her steely blue eyes were on Aerith alone. "Her body's pretty good, but she's got that virgin aesthetic that's so hard to find in girls her age, so make sure you don't neglect her face. We're going to want to catch her expressions."

Aerith wished she could crawl into a hole and die.

"All right. Quiet on the set." A warning glance for Irida and Laurin before Scarlet returned her gaze to Aerith, neatly pursing her ruby lips. "Aerith, remember what I said. We don't want anything from you except your natural reactions. Just stand there and take it."

Aerith gave a miserable nod, the smallest reaction she could give her employer, but even the gentle bob of her head proved too much movement. Drool began to leak from the corner of her aching mouth, dislodged by the tiny motion, lukewarm wetness slithering free down her straining chin to drip between her breasts. Once it started, there was no stopping it; the ball strapped inside her mouth prevented her from swallowing, encouraging more and more saliva to flow free, leaving her helplessly slobbering onto her chest, humiliating herself.

The indignity made her want to weep, but Irida was watching her, never taking her cruel eyes off of her. Whatever the blue-haired girl's reason for despising her, Aerith refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing her tears.

"Oh, and don't look at the camera too much when I'm with you." One last piece of advice from Scarlet, the red-clad woman noting Aerith's drool with a raised eyebrow, but nothing more. "That's a rookie mistake. I try to minimize edits, so bear in mind that if we need to do a retake, whatever's happening to you is going to happen twice. I'll blindfold you if I have to."

All Aerith could do was nod as yet another worry was dropped onto her shoulders.

"I'm glad you understand." Abruptly turning to her cameraman, Scarlet snapped her fingers, the sound echoing ominously throughout the dungeon. "Roll it, Leon."

The cameraman grinned, pressed a button on his camera, and a red light flashed to life on the device's front.

Just like that, the recording had begun, and Aerith felt ten times dirtier.

She braced herself for the worst, standing rigid and wary, but for long moments nobody made a move. Nobody spoke. They left her to stand there, watching her without lifting a finger to touch her, letting her shift and drool and work herself up. What was she supposed to do? Just stand here until Scarlet came over?

Seconds ticked by, and her anxiety swelled. People were going to watch this. A lot of people. Was _this_ what they wanted to see? Her, standing here, chained and afraid?

Finally, the rhythm of heels against concrete broke the painful silence.

"Welcome to my dungeon, Ellie." Scarlet stepped back into the camera's field of view with bold, sure strides, stalking a circle around Aerith like a hungry animal choosing the best moment to strike. It still took the flower girl a few moments to grasp that she was the one being addressed, to realize that Scarlet had called her by the wrong name on purpose. A stage name? She could hardly question it now with the slick pink gag blocking her mouth, but for the first time she found reason to be grateful to Scarlet. There was no way she wanted them calling her by her real name on film...

Then relief went out the window as Scarlet swept in and grasped her chin, roughly wrapping fingers around the flower girl's jaw and wrenching her head around to face her. A mask of inhuman imperiousness greeted her, snuffing out the last tiny spark of comfort, reminding her who she was dealing with. "You don't look like you want to be here."

How was she supposed to respond to that? Of _course_ she didn't want to be here. Not that she _could_ respond with her mouth filled with hard, wet rubber. She looked back at Scarlet with frightened eyes, grunted in discomfort, and her tormentor was evidently satisfied with that, releasing her chin and leaving her to sway back into place.

"I don't blame you." She was moving, again, as if taunting Aerith with her mobility, gliding to her right, then back to her left, never blocking the camera's view of Aerith for long. "After all, you are a virgin, aren't you? A dirty place like this would have been the last place an innocent thing like you would have thought about losing your virginity. I'm sure chains and gags weren't involved in your daydreams, either."

Aerith's head sank.

" _Look at me_ , you prissy little bitch."

She had been called much worse in her time in the slums, but the insult stung as if Aerith had been struck. She did as she was told, wondering if the camera could see her hurt.

"I'm not going to sugarcoat this for you, Ellie." Scarlet's frosty eyes locked on hers, daring her to look away again. "This is not going to be easy for you, and I am not going to be gentle. You're going to be stripped. You're going to be fucked. You're going to be hurt. And all of this is going to happen on camera, for the enjoyment of a global audience. Feel free to take a moment to dwell on that while I track down a little something."

As if she needed _more_ time to mull that over. Aerith had thought about little _else_ this past week, her mind always coming back to Honeybee and its horrors no matter how hard she tried to think about something, _anything_ else. She had gone over every word Scarlet had said in her head again and again, overthinking herself into a state of perpetual dread that had nearly made her sick, and being here in an actual dungeon, her wrists clapped in chains and a camera watching her every move, made everything she had dreamed up even more threateningly real.

She didn't notice that Scarlet had stepped off-camera until she returned, holding scissors.

"I've been doing this job for eight years now." The way she brandished the blunted blades like a weapon, turning them about the catch the dazzling light, made Aerith's stomach twist itself into tight, icy knots. "I've learned a lot about people over that time," she went on, delighting in the fear in the flower girl's wide green eyes, "and one of the fascinating things I've discovered is that beneath every sweet, pretty little virgin that passes through my dungeon door..."

A warm finger caressed Aerith's cheek, sliding seductively against flushed skin.

"There's a _slut_ just waiting to be let out."

The slap came out of nowhere, ripping across Aerith's cheek so brutally hard it sent her swinging with a stricken yelp, fireworks exploding in her vision, a hot flare of pain blooming across her face.

"You can resist." The words pursued her as she spun helplessly in place by her wrists, hounding her through her throbbing daze, denying her even a second's respite to recover from the blow before tormenting her anew. "You can cry, you can beg, you can squirm, you can deny it all you want."

Soft hands swept out to grasp Aerith's waist, capturing her hips and holding her still.

"But by the time we're done here, Ellie..." 

Her palms swept up Aerith's front, finding and cupping her breasts through her dress, claiming a messy, panicked whimper.

"We're _all_ going to see you for exactly what you are."

Long red fingernails scraped against the flower girl's soft breasts, hooked themselves into her bodice... and tore her dress open from her bust down to her hips, sending pink buttons spraying across the filthy concrete floor.

Her muffled scream of protest resounded throughout the basement dungeon, but it came far too late to save her beloved garment from ruin. Worn pink cloth fell wide open around her body without fastenings to hold it together, drooping loose around her sides to expose her skimpy, flowery underthings for four sets of hungry eyes and a camera's lens to feast on. 

Her observers needed little encouragement to do just that. Man and women alike ogled her without mercy as she hung there undressed and disheveled, flushed in humiliation and helpless to shield herself, gleefully taking what she hadn't wanted to give. It was a struggle not to cry, and the pang of loss she felt at the destruction of her dress didn't help her failing composure. It had been more than an item of clothing to her; it was a part of her identity, a promise to a boyfriend who had loved her in pink, and to have it so casually ripped apart felt as intimate a violation as anything they had done to her. From this angle she couldn't even tell if it could be mended-

"My, what pretty panties." Ruining the silence as casually as she had ruined Aerith's clothes, Scarlet slid her hand down to the flower girl's hip, smirking at her instinctive flinch. Her tongue swept against her painted lips, an affectation the camera wouldn't see, and Aerith shuddered at the thought that it had been for _her_. "It's almost as if you were _hoping_ somebody would see them. Maybe you're not as innocent as you look, hmm?"

" _Hmmnhh._ " Aerith had no idea what she was expected to say to that, and the ball gag ensured that nobody could tell what was coming out of her mouth anyway, but her already dented pride burned at the accusation, the words stinging almost as much as the slap had. She stared back at Scarlet in sullen silence, blushing and miserable and sore, drool dripping from her chin and slithering down between her breasts as she hung there, degraded. The other woman's uncomfortable closeness made Aerith feel claustrophobic, her touch an intimate invasion-

A palm whipped across her breast with a fleshy _crack_ , belting her vulnerable tit so hard it jiggled. 

"Pay _attention_ , you little bitch," the blonde fiend snarled through Aerith's murky squeal, grabbing the breast she had struck and squeezing it hard enough to make the flower girl's breath hitch and body stiffen in distress. "When I ask you a question, I expect a proper response. 'Yes, Mistress' or 'no, Mistress' will suffice. And don't worry about the gag, I'm accustomed to hearing sluts talk with things shoved in their mouths." 

"Yuth, mithheh." Saying the words was degrading enough without the rubber ball in her mouth slurring her speech almost beyond recognition, but at least the wet mess of syllables pleased Scarlet enough for her to release Aerith's smarting breast and back off. Unfortunately, that left her with a clear view to Irida, smirking and gloating; to Laurin, the midnight-haired woman tossing her a lewd wink as she finished with the ropes; to Leon, picking at his yellowed teeth as he ogled her; and to the camera, soullessly observing her every twitch and whimper and filing it all away for the enjoyment of... of _whoever_ was going to watch this later.

She was all too accustomed to being leered at - no girl could walk the shady streets of Wall Market without being eyed up, whistled at, even propositioned or groped by lustful strangers - but there was no brushing them off or walking away this time. This time she was shackled, undressed, completely vulnerable, and they would have what they wanted from her.

Her eyes flitting to the floor in disgrace, the first warning she received of Scarlet's presence behind her was the tight slither of arms around her body and the insistent press of ample breasts against her back.

"Don't be so stiff." The words were breathed against her hair, tickling the back of her neck beneath her ponytail, the intimate, quiet closeness almost calming amidst the storm of unpleasant sensations she had endured. Scarlet's lovely face might have been shaped from ice, but her body was comfortingly warm against hers. "You might even enjoy yourself if you loosen up a bit. There's a reason girls like you keep coming back to me."

Aerith tried to obey, despite the lingering sting in her cheek and her breast, closing her eyes tight to block out her audience and willing the tension to drift out of her. She wasn't naive enough to believe what Scarlet said - the reason girls kept coming back here was surely nothing other than money - but she was far too compromised to start defying the commanding woman now. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to settle, deeply grateful that the others were ordered to silence. 

"Good girl." Scarlet cooed the words into Aerith's ear, nudging the flower girl's straining arm forward with her forehead to gain access. Her nose nudged against Aerith's cheek, lips grazing her earlobe teasingly, then withdrawing. "I do like an obedient prisoner sometimes. Now... why don't you let me see what I'm working with?"

Those hands returned to her breasts and squeezed them, gently feeling her up through her bra and playing with their soft weight, and Aerith bit down on her thick rubber gag to stop herself from complaining, sucking air in through her nose and bearing the molestation with as much grace as she could. This was what they wanted from her, wasn't it? To just stand still and _take_ it?

Doing nothing when her body was being teased into heat was hard, and only became harder when Scarlet's palms grasped the cups of her bra and yanked them down, tucking the flowery lace under her breasts and exposing them completely. This time she was unable to choke down a moan of protest as her breasts spilled free, falling into Scarlet's waiting hands, and she didn't need to open her eyes to know that she was the center of attention in the dismal dungeon, every eye in the room locked on her soft, perky mounds and rosy, peaking nipples.

Planet, she felt like filth.

"Lovely." Red-nailed fingers eagerly caressed her chest, lifting and squeezing and shaping, thumbing and tweaking her nipples while she hung there powerless to resist. "I'll bet I'm the first person to touch them like this, aren't I?"

Aerith twisted her head away from Scarlet, groaning noncommittally through her gag. It wasn't true, and Scarlet knew it - she had been the one to force the flower girl to fondle them herself just days ago, even if she hadn't been able to handle herself with the kind of expertise Scarlet could turn against her. 

"I asked you a _question._ "

This time the slap rained down from above, swift and sure, targeting the breast that had yet to suffer. Aerith cried out, her eyes flying open as the crack of flesh on flesh echoed in her ears. "Y-yuth mithheh...!" she yelped instinctively, hoping she'd made the right choice as her brain caught up with her words.

A stifled snort from across the room. Irida was hiding her mouth behind a fist, the blue-haired vixen now entirely freed from her prison of rope, still naked and huddled on the cold concrete floor alongside Laurin. Sapphire eyes glittered with cruel glee.

If Scarlet had heard the sound, she didn't bother to admonish Irida for it. Still standing behind Aerith so as not to obstruct the camera's view, she released her victim's abused breasts and ran her palms down the flower girl's sides, hooking her fingers inside the waistband of those brief, flowery panties-

_No!_

-and yanking them down Aerith's thighs to her knees, letting them drop to catch around her thick leather boots.

Too much. This was too much. She bleated a stricken cry into her gag as the last of her was exposed, clamping her thighs together to protect herself, but the damage was already done. Scarlet's hands were on her ass, cupping and squeezing her tight buttocks beneath her ragged dress, and everyone else was staring at the thin thatch of brown hair at the junction of her thighs, taking in what she would have forbidden them to see but still eager for even more. Tears streaked down her blazing cheeks, drool drizzling from her straining lips as she shook, wishing she could end this.

"What's wrong?" Scarlet sneered the words at Aerith's nape, all trace of gentle comfort gone, and how much of the spite in her voice was theater and how much was Scarlet's true nature, the flower girl couldn't guess. "Your first time having someone grab your ass?"

No, it wasn't, but those times tended to end the same way; with a slap to the face of a Wall Market stranger and a hasty retreat into a crowd. This time the rattling of chains reminded her that there would be no slapping, nor running, and the crowd was there for the show. "Yuh... mih-heh..." she murmured belatedly, remembering herself before the punishment this time.

"Hmm." No approval, no condemnation, just the continued fondling of her rear, purposeful and firm. "In that case, I'm sure it would also be your first time experiencing _this _."__

__Something warm and thin poked at the pucker of her ass, prodding against the tightness of her entrance, and Aerith's piercing squeal of denial echoed through the dungeon. _No no no no NO! Not there!__ _

__"No?" The word hadn't been spoken aloud, but it was as if Scarlet had heard it nonetheless. Of course, Aerith's meaning hadn't been difficult to mistake; the thrashing of her head back and forth, chestnut ponytail swaying, was more than clear enough. "Not your cute little asshole? Pretty Ellie's not ready for that?"_ _

__The patronizing way she spoke irked Aerith, but not enough to protest it. Not now._ _

__"That's fine." Aerith had forgotten to respond again, but this time Scarlet showed no sign that she cared. "We can save that for another time. For now..." The scissors were presented before her, gleaming in the bright stage light. "Remember these?"_ _

__"Yuth, mih-heh..." She didn't dare press her luck, answering immediately. She had forgotten all about them, but now they were all too fresh in her mind again, threateningly so._ _

__"Good." They vanished from sight again, drawn back behind Aerith, but a moment later she would feel flat metal against the soft skin of her stretched arm, inches above her armpit. "Let's set them to work."_ _

__The scissors shifted, and cloth parted before them._ _

__It took Aerith a moment to realize what was happening. By the time she did, one sleeve of her little red jacket was in ruins, torn straight up the middle, and the other was suffering the same fate. Scarlet was _cutting_ it off of her, destroying it around her. "D-dunh...!"_ _

__"Stop whining." With a final snip it was done, and Scarlet tugged the ruined jacket off of Aerith's back and cast it aside, leaving just the remains of her long pink dress to cover her hanging body. "I want to see you. All of you."_ _

__The scissors grazed against the far reaches of her collarbone, and with a pang of dread she knew what was coming next. She squeezed her eyelids shut, tears leaking from beneath her lashes._ _

__The shoulder straps of her dress didn't last long, splitting apart between the scissors' blades, sending the ruins of her beloved garment falling to pool around her feet. She shook with a broken sob as she was rendered naked but for her boots and socks and her useless bra, unable to hold it in, and seeing Leon disengage his camera from its tripod and circle around her to film her bare ass didn't help her shattered composure._ _

__Scampering around behind Leon to avoid being caught in the shot, Irida and Laurin kept as close an eye on her as ever. Irida was, of course, utterly unsympathetic to the flower girl's plight, watching as if sitting in judgment, but there was a faint tinge of concern on Laurin's older features as she noted Aerith's distress, if not concern enough to intervene._ _

__"That's it." Scooting around to Aerith's front, silently inviting Leon and his camera closer to Aerith's rump, Scarlet dropped to one knee and lifted the flower girl's foot from the floor, hurriedly unlacing her boot and stripping it off along with the thin black sock she had worn beneath. Their twins followed in moments, rendering Aerith barefoot, the blonde woman stealing boots and socks away along with her panties and tattered dress, discarding them all in a clumsy heap atop her ruined red jacket._ _

__To Aerith's tearful eyes, it looked like a pile of an identity she had shed._ _

__The floor was freezing cold against her soles, but that was the least Aerith had to bear, and the discomfort swiftly faded to the back of her mind to hide behind her embarrassment and self-consciousness and discomfort. Irida didn't seem to mind the frigid surface, and she had sat naked on it._ _

__Maybe it was something one became used to._ _

__With a series of off-camera gestures, Scarlet guided Leon's lens on a path around the flower girl's strung-up body, leaving nothing untouched. Her ass, the phantom of terrifying pressure still lingering long after Scarlet's finger was gone. Her face, tear-streaked and drool-soaked, her mouth stretched wide and aching, her eyes defeated and frightened. Her breasts, still tender from Scarlet's insistent attention, her nipples proudly, defiantly upright. Her thighs, clamped tight together, forbidding entrance._ _

__Scarlet's hands as they wound about Aerith's legs, forcing her fingers into the minuscule gap between them, and pulled her thighs wide apart, yanking them open to the music of the flower girl's drool-slick squeals._ _

__"Quite neat down there." By the sound of her voice Scarlet was pleasantly surprised by what she found, and the gentle nudge of metal against her inner thigh told Aerith that Leon was capturing a _very_ close view of her pussy, her face blazing so unpleasantly hot that she wondered, in a moment of dizziness, if it might burn off. The oppressive scent of stale cigarette smoke harried her, depriving her of clean air when she most desperately needed it. She felt faint, darkness tugging at the edge of her vision, and the only thing that convinced her to cling to consciousness was the thought of what they might do to her if she blacked out._ _

__The questing prod of a finger between her folds woke her up in a flash._ _

__"Huh. Not even a little wet." Ignoring Aerith's hysterical wail and her attempts to thrash away, Scarlet ran her fingertip against the very outer limits of her captive's entrance, circling around from front to back and front again, teasingly light and gentle. "I thought you'd be more excited about this, Ellie. Is this not doing anything for you?"_ _

___Yes, mistress? No, mistress?_ How was she supposed to answer? Aerith was _not_ enjoying this, even a little, and the evidence was shamefully right before Scarlet's eyes, but she couldn't imagine admitting it would please her. Yet what else could she do? Tell an obvious lie? Indecision made her panic, and the feather-light graze of Scarlet's fingertip against the edge of her pussy, probing softly but relentlessly, shattered her concentration to bits. "Nnhh..."_ _

__Then the intruding finger was gone from her vulnerable nethers, abruptly taken away to alight upon ruby lips as Scarlet rose back to her full height, and Aerith sagged in blessed relief as the sensual pressure dropped away, the tiny, unwelcome thrill between her thighs easing off. Mercifully, her beautiful tormentor didn't move to punish her for her lack of an answer, appraising her with an ice-cold stare, sweet breath staining Aerith's face as Scarlet took her measure._ _

__Then the other woman sucked that errant finger deep into her mouth, and Aerith couldn't help but cringe._ _

__As Leon drew back to frame a wider shot, Scarlet extracted her finger from her pursed lips with a wet pop, presenting the saliva-slick digit before Aerith's eyes and gently crooking it inward. The meaning wasn't lost on Aerith, and she felt her chest tightening around a heart that suddenly pumped cold, primal fear binding her gut in knots of nausea, feelings that only became more intense as that finger began to wander downward. It traced between breasts already damp with drool, trailing down a chest heaving in terror to her navel, then beyond, passing through thin brown curls..._ _

__She braced herself, but when the finger slipped inside of her, she wasn't ready._ _

__" _Nnnnnnh!_ "_ _

__Her eyes slammed shut. Her whole body went stiff as a rod. She bit down on her gag, hard, and she didn't care how weird her muffled whinny of dismay sounded. Scarlet was inside her. Another woman's finger was inside of her, wriggling its way into her most private place without her consent, that single digit far more invasive and uncomfortable than two of her own. She could feel her cheeks burning beneath leather straps, her heart thundering against her chest, but worst of all she could feel herself _reacting_ down there, a tiny throb of excitement pulsing through her loins as that finger sank deeper, pushing her inner walls open around it..._ _

__"Open your eyes."_ _

__She did, wrenched by reluctance, and found herself confronted with a mask of icy superiority. The face of a woman who had complete control of her, and knew it. A woman who thought of the intimate violation she was committing as _nothing_._ _

__She crooked her finger inside of Aerith, and the flower girl whimpered and shook._ _

__"I'm not letting you fantasize your way out of this one." She began to retract her wayward digit, then sank it back inside of her, gently pumping in and out, and Aerith let her eyelids sag, only to be warned to attention with a cold, sharp glare. "You don't get to pretend you're anywhere else, with any _one_ else, you little _bitch_ ," she hissed into Aerith's face, her words becoming more venomously vehement as they strayed into the vulgar. "You stay right here, in the moment, while a complete stranger _fucks you for an audience_."_ _

__A second finger pushed its way inside of her, and Aerith bucked and whined as she felt herself stretch to accommodate it, whether she wanted to or not._ _

__"That's it. Take it for me." Keeping her fingers moving, sliding gracelessly against Aerith's vulnerable inner walls, Scarlet took a step back from the shackled girl to permit the camera a closer view, and perhaps that was some kind of signal. Leon swept in like a vulture, bringing the lens close to Aerith's tightened face and suffering green eyes she didn't dare close, greedily capturing her helpless degradation before mercifully, horrifyingly moving south._ _

__Her stomach twisted into a knot as she heard a faint wet sound, and knew that it was her._ _

__"That's more like it." Pumping her fingers deep, deliberately extracting a loud _squelch_ from the flower girl's heating pussy, Scarlet pressed her advantage over the younger girl, increasing her speed and fervor. Her thumb found Aerith's clit and rubbed it, sending a spike of desperately unwanted pleasure through the shackled girl's body, her breaths becoming more ragged and her moans uneven as she struggled to fend off her mounting arousal. Planet, she couldn't be doing this, this couldn't be real, she couldn't be letting herself..._ _

__She could only imagine what the camera was seeing between her legs. The shame sickened her._ _

__The longer it went on, the harder it was to resist. Scarlet didn't let up for a moment, plumbing Aerith's depths without relent, thumbing her clit, rubbing and pushing, and the flower girl's wretched slickness only led to even lewder sounds being broadcast throughout the dungeon, surely carrying to the observers she had almost but not quite forgotten in her dizzy haze. All was silent but for those awful noises and her stifled whimpers. She was the center of attention, and she was coming undone._ _

__Scarlet didn't break her rapid pace, even while her other hand swept up to the back of Aerith's neck and nimbly unbuckled her gag, as if both tasks at once were nothing. It was as if that filthy hand were a machine, steadily driving her towards orgasm whether she wanted it or not, and nothing in this world would stop it. She felt the bulky rubber ball being pulled out of her mouth, drool sloughing down her chin and dripping onto her heaving breasts as the gag was tossed aside, finally granting relief to her aching jaw..._ _

__Then Scarlet's lips were on hers again, kissing her as brutally hard as before, fingers locking around her cheek to keep her head in place as the older woman devoured her mouth. Caught by surprise, she had not the strength nor the wit to stop Scarlet's tongue from slithering into her mouth, sinuously dancing against hers, _taking_ the kiss from the flower girl in an act of pure, unfettered dominance._ _

__When she broke away from Aerith and permitted the poor girl to breathe, she left her taste to linger on her victim's tongue._ _

__"Your first kiss?" Her ruby smile sharpened, and the ice in her cruel blue eyes told Aerith that she had no choice but to lie. "Y-yes, mistress," she choked out, the first time she had been permitted to speak without the ball gag reducing her speech to animal grunts, barely recognizing her own strained, shaking voice. It was the first time she'd been kissed with tongue, at least, and for some reason the tiny nugget of truth made her feel slightly better about the lie, as if being honest in this place mattered._ _

__Through the entire kiss and its aftermath, Scarlet's fingers hadn't stopped. Even now they mercilessly hounded Aerith towards orgasm, driving her further and further towards her peak with every calculated push, and her limit was fast approaching. She could feel herself tightening, pressure building to a crescendo, and the sudden brush of a thumbnail against her clit made her tense and bite her lip, splintering cracks through her last defenses. "Nnnngh...!"__

___"You dirty little slut."_ _ _

__

__

__Of course it couldn't be that simple. Of course Scarlet wouldn't let it end without rubbing her nose in her disgrace, making her feel like dirt for even involuntary enjoyment of her first sexual experience with another person. Not that she _wanted_ to enjoy sex with Scarlet, of all people, but... strung up in chains, naked and covered in her own drool, humiliated and hurting, was it so wrong for her to want _something_? _Some_ reason to feel even slightly good about this, to feel like more than disgusting garbage?_ _

__"I guess you're not such a good girl after all, hmm?"_ _

__Invasive fingers curled, drawing a cry against her will._ _

__"Getting off on something like this."_ _

__She squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn't help it._ _

__"It's like you don't have any shame at all."_ _

__She tried to bury her face in her arm. It didn't work._ _

__"What sort of girl lets us chain her up?"_ _

__The wet sounds of her own sex echoed in her ears._ _

__"Strip her naked?"_ _

__She could feel her orgasm rising inside her._ _

__"Slap her tits?"_ _

__There was no holding it back. Scarlet's hand wasn't stopping._ _

__"Finger her wet little pussy?"_ _

__In, out, in, out, in, out-_ _

__"All for an audience?"_ _

__She whined, thin and fractured-_ _

__"A filthy little _whore_."_ _

__Aerith came, her whine soaring into a scream as her body clutched around Scarlet's fingers, pleasure exploding outward to her limbs, a burst of wetness slicking her thighs and soaking the blonde woman's hand._ _

__"Just. Like. That."_ _

__One final insult, but the flower girl barely heard it through the heady daze of completion. She sagged in her cuffs as euphoria ran its course, slowly beginning its inevitable fade into bitter shame, the pleasure abandoning her to the reality she had tried to leave behind. Spent, bitter tears sliding down her cheeks, she let her head sink to her chest as Scarlet withdrew her digits from their sordid home, still shaking from the aftershocks, humiliated beyond any words she could think of to describe it._ _

__Then, without warning or ceremony, Scarlet lifted her sticky fingers to Aerith's sluggishly parted lips and pushed them inside, pressing down her tongue before the bleary-eyed flower girl realized what was happening. "Clean them," she commanded, and the chilling look on her regal features did not invite refusal._ _

__Face twisting in disgust, Aerith did the only thing she could do. She sucked, draining Scarlet's digits of her own slick leavings, the faintly salty taste of herself threatening to make her sick as she took it all in. She braced herself to spit it out, but as soon as Scarlet's saliva-soaked fingers popped free of Aerith's pink lips her other palm swooped in to cover them, clamping hard around her cheeks, and she knew that she had no choice but to swallow._ _

__She did, shuddering in revulsion, and gasped for air when Scarlet left her, rubbing her soiled tongue against the side of her arm. It tasted of cooling sweat, but better that than the remnants of sex._ _

__As she hung there, suddenly very conscious of the dull ache in her straining arms and the chill of the basement air, Scarlet moved across the room to Leon's side, out of shot, and placed a hand on his shoulder._ _

__Leon nodded, and flicked the switch on his camera. The red light died._ _

__It was over._ _

__"Nicely done." When Scarlet turned back to Aerith, it was with a genuine smile. Not a pleasant, friendly smile, more the smile of a satisfied predator, but a smile. "That will do. Not bad for a first effort."_ _

__Aerith just let herself breathe, watching through half-lidded eyes. Her cheeks still burned, but embers now, not a wildfire._ _

__"Huh." Wrapped in a robe that the flower girl hadn't seen her put on, Irida watched her with lifted eyebrows, a faint smirk on the blue-haired girl's lips. "Can't believe you got her to eat cum on a first date. Maybe she _does_ belong here."_ _

__Behind her, Laurin lifted herself to her feet, bringing her palms together in a teasing little clap. "Absolutely wonderful, dear. I was hard-pressed not to touch myself, and even Irida appreciated your performance."_ _

__Rising from the floor, Irida rounded on the dark-haired lady. "Shut up! I still don't like her, no matter what Scarlet makes her do!"_ _

__Aerith didn't respond. She wished they would go away. All of them._ _

__"I know I'm gonna be watching that one a few times." Leon scratched at his stubble as he stepped away from the camera, throwing Aerith a long, lingering glance. "No substitute for the real thing, though. Maybe next time you can get Laurin to work camera, and she and I can..."_ _

__Nausea churned in Aerith's belly at the thought._ _

__"That's enough for now, Leon." Arms crossed, Scarlet stepped to interpose herself between the cameraman and Aerith, lustrous blonde hair hiding her face from Aerith's view. "Laurin. Irida. I'll see the both of you on Friday. Wear the costumes I gave you, and _nothing_ else. Understood?"_ _

__Receiving their exit cues, both women nodded and made for the dungeon door, Leon close behind. All three shot glances back at Aerith as they departed, the cameraman's and the older woman looking upon her with naked lust, the blue-haired girl somewhere between wanting and spiteful glee. The heavy door slammed shut behind them, and suddenly, as it had been in the beginning, Aerith and Scarlet were alone._ _

__"Let me down." Again Aerith barely recognized her own voice, this time mouse-like and exhausted._ _

__"Of course." High heels clicked against concrete as Scarlet briskly made her way to the mechanism, manipulated it, and Aerith felt her arms dropping above her as the chain slowly began to loosen, lowering her gracelessly to the floor. Her bare legs buckled as she slumped, her cuffed hands falling into her lap as Scarlet returned to join her, a key in her hand. They were both silent as she unlocked the handcuffs, liberating Aerith's aching wrists, the blonde woman watching her closely as she hugged her arms around her naked breasts._ _

__"Next time, I won't let them sit in." When it became evident that Aerith wasn't going to speak, Scarlet broke the silence, collecting cuffs and gag and padlock and standing back to her full height, looking down on the naked flower girl like a queen surveying a groveling subject. "You may have to perform with them in future, but next time-"_ _

__"There won't be a next time." Yet again Aerith surprised herself, this time with how clear she made herself sound._ _

__Scarlet said nothing, merely handed her her discarded panties._ _

__Hollow eyed, Aerith accepted them and pulled them on, wincing as they touched the damp between her legs. They were quickly soaked through and soiled, but she left the flowery underthings on, reaching up to unhook her bra and fit it back around her breasts. Modesty was pointless now, but it felt like putting this behind her. "I don't suppose I can clean up?" she asked bitterly, remembering what Scarlet had said the last time she had asked._ _

__Scarlet's shoe collected the ruined scraps of the flower girl's pink dress and lifted it over to her._ _

__Aerith accepted it, her stomach tightening, struggling not to weep. Slowly, her hand shaking, she took it between her thighs and began to wipe herself down, cleaning off her mess. She wished it would work that way on her tongue._ _

__"We have old dresses you can wear." By the time she looked up, Scarlet was already attending a cabinet at the side of the room, removing a crumpled blue summer dress and returning to Aerith's side. "Slightly... used, but the stains aren't obvious. It will serve to get you home."_ _

__Aerith said nothing as she took it, pulling it over her head and letting the musty-smelling fabric fall down over herself, the loose skirt descending to her knees. It was tight around the chest and the hips, but it would do. Anything would do._ _

__"The attendant at the front will have your payment." A curt nod, which Aerith took as dismissal. "A pleasure working with you, Aerith. Or, should I say, Ellie. I believe our audience will find it most... fulfilling."_ _

__Resolutely refusing to think about that - though she knew the knowledge would haunt her tonight, and for many nights after - Aerith hurriedly slipped on her socks and pulled her boots over the top of them, clumsily lacing them. They looked absurd with the summer dress she wore, but she didn't care. She knew that she must look like a mess, from crying, from pain, from sex, but she took a step toward the dungeon door, then another, letting her shaking feet take her away from this awful place. From Scarlet, the woman who had defiled her._ _

__She looked back only once, to glance at her scattered clothing. Her precious pink dress, wet with cum, buttons scattered across the concrete. Her red jacket, sleeves ripped to shreds, maybe salvageable if she had the heart to wear it again. She didn't._ _

__Clamping a hand over her mouth, she breathed a shaking sigh into her palm and left._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't expect this to take so long. I'm hoping the next one won't take over a month. Apologies.


	4. True Colors

Elmyra Gainsborough had questions, and Aerith had lies.

Where had she been? Peddling flowers, as she always did.

Where had the money to buy medicine suddenly come from? She had found a rare materia in the ruins of Sector 6 and sold it to one of the stores on the plate.

What had happened to her beloved pink dress? Somebody had spilled oil on it, staining it beyond cleaning.

Her answers were far from convincing, and her mother's doubt in her convenient stories was obvious, but whatever her reasons, Elmyra hadn't challenged Aerith further on any of it. On the surface, at least, she had accepted her daughter's words as truth and accepted the medicine and that had been the end of the matter.

For Elmyra, at least. For Aerith, it could never be so simple.

Almost a week had passed since she had been strung up in a filthy dungeon and forced to orgasm on a stranger's fingers, but the memories hadn't faded even a fraction. She could still feel the handcuffs biting her wrists, the gag forcing open her jaw, the greedy stares of unwelcome onlookers devouring her naked body as she was.... _fucked_...

Just thinking the word made her cringe, filling her with shame, but she couldn't deny that it was exactly what had happened to her. Scarlet had fucked her. On camera. And she had let it happen. Not just that, but she had essentially given her _permission_ to fuck her. A woman she didn't want, in any way. _For money_.

It had taken a few days before Aerith had found the courage to leave the house, but it wasn't shame that had kept her indoors. No, it was knowing that anyone she encountered out in the slums of Midgar, from a passing Shinra soldier to a lech in an alleyway to an honest shopkeeper, _any_ of them might have seen the video she had unwillingly starred in not a week ago. For all she knew, it had been distributed to a horny public the very night she had slunk home in a dress quite unlike the one she'd left in. Hundreds of people might have bought it, _watched_ it. Watched _her._

What if they recognized her? What if they made the connection that Ellie, the girl who had degrading sex with women in basement dungeons, was Aerith, the cheerful flower girl they saw every day? She had never seen the recording herself and had absolutely no desire to, but part of her wondered just how recognizable she was on the recording, under the harsh stage lights, her face streaked with tears and drool, her hair a mess...

The dress and jacket she wore out almost every day, on clear display for the camera until they was torn to shreds around her.

As much as she wanted to stay safe at home forever, or at least until she had aged enough to look like someone else, that simply wasn't a possibility. Her mother's medicine might have been paid for, but they still had to eat, and that meant Aerith had to be selling flowers in the streets, not hiding under her bed. After four days of moping at home, despising herself and feeling like dirt, she had no option but to go back to work.

To her surprise, slipping back into her comfortable routine had been much easier than she had been dreading. The flowers were still where they had left them, the church in Sector 5 still as still and serene as ever. If anybody she had met had seen the video of her debasing herself and had recognized her, they did a remarkably good job of hiding it. Could it really be this easy? Would life just go on, as if nothing had ever happened beneath a Wall Market sex store?

Two nights later, she had come home to find Scarlet waiting by the gatepost.

Aerith had frozen in place, feeling as if the earth had dropped away beneath her feet.

It was as if the blonde harpy had stepped out of Aerith's nightmares, strutting out into a world where she didn't belong and was most definitely not welcome. Her revealing red dress was gone, replaced by a modest blouse and skirt that didn't stand out as much as the beauty wearing them, but the expression on her face was as distantly appraising as ever, chewing her up and spitting her out without so much as a twitch of her jaw. Red earrings caught the dwindling sunlight, glimmering like rubies, contrasting the icy sapphire eyes that just wouldn't leave Aerith alone.

"W-what are you doing here?" She wondered if she looked as sick as she felt. The way her stomach twisted and roiled, she feared she might throw up on Scarlet's clothes. Maybe _that _would get rid of her, she thought bitterly, still hoping she was some kind of optical illusion, some door-to-door saleswoman who looked _just_ similar enough to Scarlet to scare her.__

__"Aerith." Lips curling into a familiar smile, Scarlet stepped to one side, deliberately cutting the flower girl off from the door of her refuge. "So good to see you again. I can see you're doing well, even after-"_ _

__"Why. Are. You. Here?" She was barely holding together, but Aerith still found enough resolve to fill her words with steel, to be more than the girl who Scarlet had brought undone. Fists clenched around her house key and the wicker handle of her flower basket, she stilled the shudder in her voice, her vibrant green eyes clear and hard. "I told you I'm done with you. I did... what you wanted me to. I was paid. That's it."_ _

__"Not exactly."_ _

__Aerith felt her heart sink. There went any possiblity that this had just been a chance meeting, slim as it had been. "I read the contract," she hissed, instinctively glancing back at the house. "I know what I signed. I want you out of here before my- before anyone _sees_ you."_ _

__"I'm sure you do." Unfazed, Scarlet reached into her pocket and drew out her phone, dreadfully familiar in its own right, waggling it in front of Aerith meaningfully. "I'm sure there are many things you'd prefer people around here didn't see. If you know what I mean."_ _

__Aerith knew. She knew _exactly_ what Scarlet was talking about, and knew exactly why the bitch was bringing it up now, and suddenly all of her resolve was gone. She knew even before Scarlet flipped the device around to reveal the screen, the picture of herself chained up and naked and..._ _

___...Wait. No._ Aerith squinted at the screen in confusion, peering through the glare of the fading sunlight. The scene on the phone's display _wasn't_ from the day Scarlet had worked her over in her dungeon, but it was still her, and still _very_ compromised. A red sofa. Flushed cheeks. An unbuttoned dress. A hand down her panties, clumsily rubbing herself. Her disgrace, digitized._ _

__Her chest tightened, all color draining from her face. She barely even registered the absurdity of standing in the middle of her tranquil garden, in broad daylight, watching porn. Porn of _herself_. "Turn it off..."_ _

__Scarlet thumbed a button on the screen, and the footage shifted... but it didn't entirely vanish. Instead, the image of the flower girl shamefully touching herself was replaced by a slightly more decent shot, her dress still opened but her hands in full view. Before she had completely humiliated herself._ _

_"Aerith Gainsborough. I'm 20. I... I live in Sector 5. Under the plate."_

__Her voice. Her words. She didn't remember speaking them, but she had. Her name, her age, and if not her exact address, more than enough for somebody to find her if they wanted to._ _

__The implications were... unpleasant._ _

__"You're much more popular than we thought you'd be." Smiling brighter than her words deserved, Scarlet tucked her phone back into her pocket, resting her chin on her folded hand as she leaned against the gatepost. "We thought you'd be yet another one-and-done newbie, fucked and forgotten, but we're already getting requests from our clientele for you. A lot of requests. Ellie's quite a star." She wrinkled her nose. "I guess the innocent act really baited a few fish."_ _

__Aerith didn't reply. Couldn't._ _

__"So. Next Thursday. 7pm." The ashen face of the flower girl bought her no sympathy from Scarlet, trampling on her stricken silence with her pointed heels. "Be in the Honeybee dungeon, or be spread all over the sector by 8. I'll make sure everyone who means _anything_ to you gets to see our home movies, in _intimate_ detail."_ _

__She felt faint. Sick. The world wobbled around her, threatening to darken. "Y-you can't do this."_ _

__"Can't we?" Scarlet raised her eyebrows in mock surprise, her voice cutting like a knife. "Who are you going to cry to? The Shinra? They don't care what happens in this town, as long as their company makes a fortune. Believe me, I know _exactly_ how that place works, and they don't give a fuck about you."_ _

__The truth hurt like another slap to the face. There was no-one to protect her. Scarlet was right about the Shinra, and everyone in Midgar knew it, and as for Aerith's boyfriend... Zack... _he_ could have done something, but he was gone, posted halfway across the world for years now by the very same Shinra. She didn't even know where he was, let alone how to contact him, and even if she had, how _could_ she? _Anyone_ she went to for help would find out what she'd done, even if Scarlet kept her mouth shut._ _

__No. She was on her own._ _

__"You'll be paid, of course." The icy triumph on Scarlet's face was a declaration of victory, and it seemed she wasn't above throwing a scrap or two to the vanquished, though right now money was the last thing on Aerith's whirling mind. "Honeybee doesn't stiff our performers. In fact, the harder our shoots are on you, the more gil we slip you. Not a bad deal for a slum rat, even a pretty one."_ _

__Numb, nauseous, Aerith drew her arms around her body, dropping her head, chestnut bangs straying over her eyes. Whoring herself to these people had been horrible enough when it was of her own volition, for the most part, but to be forced into it... to be made to go _back_ to that place, a place she had spent the last few days telling herself over and over again that she would never need to see again... "P-please," she choked out, a shadow of the defiant girl from not five minutes ago. "I'm not... not that _kind of person_. I _don't want to do this_." She swallowed, painfully aware of Scarlet's icy stare, judging her. "Irida was right about me. I'm not _like_ her, or Laurin, or... or you. I'm not."_ _

__Scarlet merely smiled. "I think that's why the viewers like you so much. See you next Thursday... Ellie."_ _

__She turned, walked away with golden tresses glittering in the dwindling light, and Aerith propped herself on the gatepost and sank shaking to her knees, bile burning in her throat and lead nested in her stomach._ _

__Planet, what had she done?_ _

__~ ~ ~_ _

__Thursday came, as Thursday always did, and Aerith stood half-naked before her bedroom mirror, wishing she had never darkened the door of Honeybee Productions._ _

__Her breasts cupped by the flowery bra Scarlet had approved of so much, the matching panties nestled around her hips, she stared at her reflection with desperate eyes, barely believing that she was wearing the lacy set once more. She'd never wanted to see the cursed things again, had been forced to dig them out of the trash for this, washing them clean along with the blue summer dress they'd given her to replace her beloved pink one._ _

__Reluctantly scooping the very same dress from her bed, she hastily pulled it over her head and shoulders and let the skirt settle around her knees, wrinkling her nose at the stale smell that hadn't come out in the wash. It was still too small for her, uncomfortably, visibly tight around her breasts, and it left her arms and much of her legs bare on a day of biting wind and drizzling rain that slipped through the unfinished plate above, but if they were just going to tear her clothes off of her when she got there again, she wasn't going to wear anything she wanted to keep._ _

__Despair draining her face of vitality, she glanced away from her reflection, swallowing a sob. Was this what she _was_ now? A girl who dressed with the expectation of losing it before she got home?_ _

__She'd thought it over, and over, and over and over until her head ached. There were no ways out of this that didn't lead to her secret getting out to the entire sector. Scarlet had her name, her address, and not one but two compromising tapes of her doing things she cringed even to remember. Soon, she would have three. She couldn't run, she couldn't hide, she couldn't talk the awful woman out of doing this to her - the tiny scrap of compassion she had shown Aerith that day in the dungeon, when she was naked and shackled and broken, it had obviously been a lie. A sham. A mask of humanity cloaking a monster._ _

__This was going to happen to her, again, and she couldn't bring herself to think it would be the last time._ _

__Her hands were trembling as she threaded her chestnut tresses through her hairtie, her ponytail untidy but the best she could do. She wore sandals this time, simple brown leather ones she hadn't worn in years, not wanting to see how Scarlet would react if she arrived in thick boots to complement her summery dress. She barely felt like herself anymore, and maybe that was for the best. If she was going to survive this ordeal, she was going to need to learn to compartmentalize._ _

__At least her mother wasn't home tonight. The last thing she wanted was to explain herself._ _

__~ ~ ~_ _

__This time, she passed by the red door without stopping._ _

__The dingy hallway beneath the adult store was uncomfortably familiar to Aerith now, every dent on the wall and stain on the floor catalogued in her head, but the dungeon door at the end of the corridor was only more imposing now that she knew lay on the other side of it, the memories a scar across her mind._ _

__Her fingers found the handle, clutched tight around it, but there wasn't enough strength in her to open the door and face her fate._ _

__She sank forward, resting her forehead against the cool, smooth metal, rain-damp hair clinging to her skin. Her heart thundered, her stomach writhed, teeth snaring her lip so hard it was a miracle she didn't draw blood. She was here. Again. Her own personal hell, the place she had lost her virginity to a pair of invasive fingers, where her innocence had been torn away, trampled, spat upon._ _

__This time, it was going to be worse, but if she didn't let Scarlet have her way with her... she trembled to think what the less palatable denizens of Wall Market would do if they knew she had taken money for sex. She had never entirely felt safe among the familiar shops and alleys, always a catcall or a lingering stare away from feeling like she needed a shower, but if word about her got out..._ _

__Aerith shook, bracing herself with a shuddering breath. With every video she filmed in this filthy place she was more and more likely to be identified, but if she didn't go along with what Scarlet wanted, the game would be over instantly. Her life would be ruined. She would be lucky if her mother didn't disown her on the spot. She'd been screwed the moment she had come here. Now, she was in the palm of Scarlet's hand until the harpy decided to let her drop, and Aerith would be _damned_ lucky if she wasn't spiteful enough to spread the video around anyway._ _

__Finally, calmer on the outside if not within, she lifted her forehead from the door, smoothed down her wet summer dress, ran a palm across her face as if she could brush away her anxieties with the raindrops. She couldn't. Fingers white-knuckled around the door handle, she swallowed, swept her fingers through her damp chestnut hair, adjusted the irritatingly tight bodice of her dress, did anything she could think of that would let her stall just a moment longer._ _

__Then, there was nothing else to do, and Aerith could wait no longer. It was surely 7pm now, if not later, and she could feel the seconds piling up on her shoulders, weighing her down, crushing her. There was only one option left to her now, and with every instinct she possessed screaming at her to get out, the flower girl forced her shaking hands to push the dungeon door inward, the hinges raging at her choice._ _

__Irida was there to greet her, a feral smirk on her lips and a bundle of rope in her hands._ _


	5. Whore

"You're wearing _that_?!"

The look on Irida's face was halfway between scorn and amusement as she ran her eyes over Aerith's rain-damp dress, a hand sliding down to her hip as her gaze lifted back to meet the flower girl, nose wrinkled. "Are you trying to be funny?"

Aerith's lips moved soundlessly, her face pale as snow. She could barely even _process_ the question, let alone respond to it. Why was Irida here?! Scarlet hadn't said a word about this, and she'd hoped she would never see the blue-haired girl again... but here Irida was, and the rope in her hand and the outfit hugging her slight body suggested that she was to be anything but an observer.

"What? Cat got your tongue?" With a derisive roll of her eyes, Irida turned away from her, the sky-blue latex panties and bra clutching at her scrawny ass and petite bust catching the glow of the stage lights as she pivoted to face the figures standing in the back of the room, figures Aerith only now noticed watching them. "Isn't that the dress I got fucked in like a month back? That shoot with the big guy? You seriously gave it to her to _wear home_?" Her scowl gave way to a scandalized giggle, and she clamped a palm over her mouth to contain it. "Oh my _God_."

Aerith fought down a surge of revulsion.

"No, no, no. We're not doing it in that." Irida flicked a hand in her direction, but kept her eyes on the figures watching for a distance. Scarlet, Aerith discerned against the glare, and the cameraman from before. Leon. "I can change her, right? We don't have to stick with this?"

"Go right ahead." Not even bothering to greet Aerith, the veil of cordiality torn away, Scarlet nodded toward a cracked old wardrobe at the side of the room. She was dressed all in red again, a blouse and skirt and high-heeled shoes, her lustrous blonde hair hanging free from its usual ponytail. "Pick out what you want, but I retain a veto. This is my studio."

"What's going on here...?" Anxiety swirling in her stomach, Aerith tried to put the pieces together, and the picture that formed was not one that she liked. "What do you want from me?"

"What's going on is that you're Irida's submissive for today." Arctic coldness infused Scarlet's voice as she stared down her nose at Aerith, face practically carved from stone. "You'll do what she tells you, as if the order had come from me. If she gets _too_ out of control I will stop her, but failing that, you will follow her directions to the letter. Try not to fall apart too quickly."

A sickening chill wormed its way through Aerith's chest. She had dared to hope that she had been mistaken about where this was going, but no, she was going to be at _Irida's_ mercy this time. Irida, who had little problem sitting around naked and tied up in rope. Irida, who had hated her since the moment they'd met, and held her in utter contempt.

As for Scarlet... her promise made a poor safety net. The last time Aerith had been here, she'd been chained up, hurt, humiliated, forced to orgasm, all at the blonde woman's own hand. If her bar for 'out of control' was as low as it seemed... this was not going to be pleasant.

"Right. So get that dress off, 'Ellie'." Irida was moving, padding across the basement to the closet Scarlet had indicated, but her shrewd eyes rarely strayed from Aerith, cruelly calculating. "We're going with something else for this one. In fact, I've already got something in mind."

Aerith flinched. If she had hoped that undressing for an audience would be easier by now, that was one more hope crushed. The camera wasn't on or even trained on her, but three sets of eyes was still three too many. Her hands knotted in the rain-damp skirt of the used sundress, teeth worrying her lip.

"Aerith." Scarlet's warning cracked like a whip. "Do as she tells you. Unless you want me to...?"

She didn't need to finish that threat. Aerith hadn't forgotten the recordings, but the reminder was still a hammer blow to her resistance, and she shut her eyes tight as she lifted her skirt and ripped the dress up over her head, throwing it to the floor as if it had wronged her. Cold air kissed her skin as chestnut hair fell back into place, her panties and bra the only scraps left to her-

"...Again?"

Disgust resonated in Scarlet's voice as heels clicked their way across the concrete floor, ice-blue eyes distressingly fixed on Aerith's chest. The flower girl shrank back, but there was nowhere to go, and she found herself caught between Scarlet and the dungeon wall, the familiar scent of sickly perfume smothering her as the older woman hooked a finger in the strap of Aerith's flowery bra.

"You wore the same underwear." Clicking her tongue in disapproval, Scarlet sighed, taking a step back and placing her manicured hands on her hips. "Take it off. Those ugly boots, too. We'll start over."

Already burning cheeks flushed deeper. Wasn't this what she was supposed to be wearing? The flowery set was the nicest underwear she owned by far, even if she had already worn it here before. "I thought-"

"Never wear the same underwear twice." Scarlet cut her off, ruby lips pursed. "The customers notice. It's boring. The next time you do, you'll be leaving here without any, so if this is the only good lingerie you own, I suggest you buy something nice with your next payment. We'll try not to tear it off of you."

Aerith nodded bleakly.

Scarlet cleared her throat, a small frown emerging. "I believe I told you to get that off."

Aerith swallowed, hesitant, but what else could she do but obey? She unlaced her boots, unclasped her bra, stepped out of her panties, trying not to notice Leon staring at her as she stripped herself to her skin. Naked, she stood there awkwardly with her underwear still bunched in her hand, not knowing where to look. Her heart ached, her stomach twisted.

The sounds of hangers sliding along rails filled the dungeon air as Irida foraged through the closet, casting Aerith a quick glance, then returning to her hunt. "What size is she?"

"Here." Scarlet snatched the flowery panties out of Aerith's grasp, balling them up and tossing them across the room to Irida. The blue-haired girl didn't bother trying to catch them, scooping them up from the floor when she was ready and casually peering at the tag with a scornful twist of her lip. "Got it. Can we skip the bra this time? I want to make her look _trashy_. Like a real whore."

She hadn't been slapped yet, but it felt like she had.

"That's fine." Pausing to scoop up the flowery bra from where it had fallen, Scarlet stepped away from Aerith, gliding back across to Leon's side. Leaving her alone, bare, vulnerable.

Irida smirked, her eyes splitting their time between closet and flower girl, her smirk widening with every alternation. "Yeah. Yeah, I've got just the thing here for you. Come over here."

Aerith reluctantly approached, the concrete cold against her bare feet, fear colder against her chest.

"I'm going to make you such a _slut_." Eyes alight with glee, Irida thrust a tiny bundle of cloth into Aerith's hands. Panties, she discovered with a nauseous squirm of her stomach, eye-searingly pink, more than half lace, and worst of all, disgustingly mottled with stains. And damp. Planet, they were damp around the crotch, as if they had just been worn and-

She dropped them before she knew she was doing it, hand dropping to wipe itself clean on a skirt that was no longer there.

"Put them on." Irida turned away, dismissing Aerith's disgust. "And these, too," she added, carelessly tossing a small bundle of black in her direction as well. Fishnet stockings, the flower girl discovered, her cheeks searingly hot, and a lacy black garter belt to hold them up. She'd seen things like these before, but never, ever worn them. Or wanted to.

If only she had a choice.

Slowly, resentfully, she stooped to pick up the panties, unfurling the hot pink undergarments with a nose wrinkled in revulsion. They reeked of sex, and it wasn't hard to guess why they were damp, but with no other options open to her, she swallowed her disgust and bent over, stepping into the lace-trimmed holes and pulling them up over her legs. She winced as cool wetness kissed her crotch, sickened, but busied herself with the garter belt rather than dwelling on it, sliding the fishnets up to her thighs and clipping them to the belt, feeling every inch a slum harlot.

"Nice." There was no keeping the grin off of Irida's face. "Here, these too," she added, tossing a pair of crimson heels to clatter to the floor in Aerith's vicinity, the blue-haired vixen clearly enjoying every moment of this. "Let's _really_ tart you up. And... hmm."

Shooting Irida an angry glare, Aerith had barely found her balance in the slightly-too-tight shoes by the time the other girl emerged from the wardrobe again, holding up a dress on a thin metal hanger. "This. Definitely this."

Dazzlingly red, it shimmered like a gemstone under the bright stage lights, its silken sheen making Aerith long to touch it despite herself. Under different circumstances she might even have called the garment beautiful, but though the dress was far less skimpy than she had dreaded, the bodice cut low but the skirt ankle length, it was hard to find enthusiasm for it when it was just going to be stripped from her anyway.

Still, better she wear it than stand here bare-breasted and shivering. When Irida shoved the hanger into her hands, Aerith didn't hesitate for once, quickly pulling the dress over her head and letting the skirt fall down over her panties and her fishnet-sheathed legs. It felt good to cover her shame, though she had to wonder why she was being given the chance. Was this the... _sluttiest_ thing in that wardrobe? It couldn't be, right?

"Perfect." Irida was in front of Aerith before the flower girl realized she was coming, and to her dismay, the smaller girl was holding a small tube of lipstick in her fingers, the shade every bit as fiercely red as her dress and her shoes and her humiliated blush. "Hold still," Irida commanded, wielding the tube with expert precision, pushing it against Aerith's lips as the brunette tried not to flinch. "We're going for that high class hooker look. You know, the kind of girl who thinks she's too good for this business even when she's making a career out of getting fucked. You get what I'm talking about, _right_?"

Aerith could only respond with her eyes, but her venomous stare was answer enough.

"I knew you would." A sly smile on her lips, Irida capped the lipstick and stepped back, admiring from afar the transformation she had forced upon the unwilling brunette. Ruby lips and ruby dress, a bodice cut embarrassingly low, a scandalous glimpse of fishnets beneath her skirt, shoes halfway between the tasteful and the slutty. The poor girl's self-consciousness was delicious, and Irida lapped it up, eyes glittering with malice. "Oh, untie your hair, too. I want it down for this."

It stung more than it had any right to, but Aerith did as she was told. Her loose ponytail fell open, draping chestnut tresses down her back to her hips. It felt like a new layer of exposure, as if a mask had been stolen from her.

"Yeaaah. _That's_ better." Nodding her approval over Leon's admiring whistle, Irida shared a glance with the cameraman. "Okay, let's get this show on the road. This slutty, _slutty_ show. Fire it up, will you?"

Leon looked to Scarlet, who merely smiled in return.

"Places, everyone." Irida flipped her hand at the center of the room, the skimpy, skin-tight latex catching the light with every tiny movement. "For you, 'Ellie', _your_ place is in front of the camera. On your knees. Go. _Now_."

Crimson lips twisted into a frown, Aerith obeyed. Her skirt and fishnets did little to shield her knees from the chilly concrete.

"I'll be with you in a minute. Leon, just focus on her until I get over there." The blue-haired girl was back at the closet - no, at a rusty old filing cabinet beside the closet - rummaging through one of the drawers, the contents clattering and clunking. "I want the audience to get a good look at her before I ruin the look I worked so hard on. And _you'd_ better look at the camera," she added with a pointed glare at Aerith.

Leon thumbed a button, and the red light on the camera winked to life.

She was being recorded. Again. The more Aerith subjected herself to this, the more the camera's lens felt like a window to the computers and phones of thousands of perverts. As if they were watching her right now, as if they saw her, dressed like a high-class hooker, and judged her even as they leered and slipped their hands down their pants...

She wondered if the despair she could feel creeping across her face was what they wanted.

Across the room, the only noise in the basement ceased. Irida was moving, turning, and despite her orders Aerith couldn't keep herself from peering into the shadows, emerald eyes desperate for answers. What was she doing? What was she _planning_ to do?

The thick rubber phallus the girl was buckling around her waist by its harness suggested an answer she would have preferred not to learn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This wasn't where this chapter was originally intended to leave off, but I felt bad for not posting more often, so it'll be continued in the next one.


	6. Charade

"Listen close, you little slut."

Even after everything, the insult still made Aerith flinch.

"You might be paying me to dominate your ass, but don't think you get any say in what happens to you in my dungeon." Irida's sky-blue latex underwear shifted with the light as she stepped on-camera, the flesh-toned girth of her alarmingly large strap-on hanging ludicrously between her legs. Its purpose was immediately clear to the flower girl, despite this being the first time she had ever seen one, and fear danced in her belly at the sight, sickening certainty closing in on her like a tightening fist. She was barely even listening to the story Irida was throwing at her, hardly caring what flimsy context she spun for their encounter.

"I expect attention."

A hand drummed against Aerith's scalp, and the kneeling brunette reluctantly turned her head to follow her tormentor as she stepped behind her, her hands awkwardly clutching in her lap as the menacing length of the strap-on passed before her vision. It was sculpted to resemble the real thing - that much at least she knew - from its bulbous head to its veiny shaft to the drooping balls hanging at the base, but as ridiculous as it looked, as much as it made her want to laugh, she couldn't. Not when she knew what it was for, where it was going.

"I expect _effort_."

Fingertips found their way into Aerith's tresses, no longer held captive in her familiar ponytail, brushing through the long brown strands as if to tease out tangles that weren't there to begin with.

"I expect enthusiasm."

Fingers massaged the flower girl's scalp, gently, almost lovingly, such a stark contrast to Irida's normally vicious personality that it left Aerith even more uneasy, waiting for the gil to drop.

"I expect obedience."

She felt her hair being gathered behind her head, held back in a grip that was just a little too sharp to be comfortable, then released to spill back down her shoulders, soiled by the vixen's toying touch.

"Most of all..."

Fingers hooked into claws and fisted in Aerith's brunette locks, sending thorns of pain through her scalp as they yanked her head back, whipping her startled face towards the ceiling and the sneering visage of her blue-haired tormentor.

"I expect you to be a good little whore and suck my cock."

 _Her cock._ Dread bloomed in Aerith's heart like a spreading bloodstain. She could see _it_ in the corner of her vision, the flesh-toned obelisk of rubber proudly protruding over her shoulder like a blade at her vulnerable throat, a silent, looming threat designed for just one thinh. Its presence made her forget all about the pain prickling through her scalp, primal fear written across her pale, rigid face as she knelt there, her hair trapped in Irida's grip, her crimson dress shimmering with her every shaking breath.

Panic swelled in her chest, but she struggled to maintain control of herself, or what little control she had, frantically trying to process what the latex-clad girl wanted from her. Obedience, she'd said. Effort. Enthusiasm. She would not be permitted to stay passive this time, as she had when Scarlet had chained her up and brought her to orgasm on her fingers. This time, she had to _participate_. Pretend this was what she wanted, that she wasn't being forced into it.

She had to play along.

Finally, with a dismissive snort, Irida withdrew her fingers from Aerith's hair and roughly shoved the flower girl's head forward, circling back around to her front with the strap-on bouncing absurdly with every step. By the time Aerith managed to lift her face and blink her bangs out of her eyes, the ludicrous thing was hanging right in front of her lips, the scent of rubber and something _else_ she couldn't name wafting into her nose, making her instinctively recoil.

"You know what you want, _Ellie_." Bright blue eyes stared down at her expectantly, glittering with malice. Irida wore the face of a woman who finally had Aerith where she had wanted her since the moment they met, and was loving every second of her triumph. Her hand cupped the dildo from below, keeping it insistently offered. "Go on. Take it. Before I change my mind."

Aerith wanted to throw up. Taking the revolting thing into her mouth would have sickened her even if it hadn't been strapped to Irida's crotch - somehow it was even _more_ degrading than if it had been a real one - but she had no power to refuse. She was a slave to these people, as much a prop as the dildo hanging in front of her lips, and if she defied them now, a sex toy in her mouth would be the least of her problems.

Hesitantly, wetting the inside of her mouth with her tongue, she leaned forward and accepted the head of the molded dildo between her parted lips.

It was as unpleasant an experience as she had dreaded it would be, at once starkly impersonal and deeply, embarrassingly intimate. The bulky girth of the dildo made her grunt and wince as it filled up her mouth and spread it open, the smooth, cool, rubber-tasting tip pushing against her tongue and invading deeper within. Exploring her. Testing her.

She could only imagine what she must look like. What Scarlet and Leon were seeing. What the _camera_ was seeing.

"Don't be shy." She couldn't see Irida's face from this angle, but she could hear the gloating in the shrew's delighted purr, could feel the possessiveness in the hands that once again nested in her silken tresses, clutching her head in place. "Take as much of it as you like," she insisted, pushing her hips toward Aerith's face, sinking the thick, vein-lined phallus deeper into the brunette's mouth, forcing her lips to tighten around the shaft. "Greedy little _slut_."

The dildo rammed against the back of her throat, and Aerith's eyes shot open, her gag reflex violently, noisily rejecting the intrusion. Her whole body jerked of its own accord, her hands flying up to clutch at the shaft of the invader, but her choking, spluttering reaction earned her no sympathy. Irida held her head fast, forcing Aerith to endure as the cock dominated her mouth, gleefully rubbing the phallic toy against the flower girl's throat and tongue and reveling in the shades of pink and stinging tears that painted the flower girl's miserable, stricken face.

She couldn't breathe. Couldn't take in any air at all through the rubber monstrosity filling her mouth and blocking her throat. She spluttered, gagged, fought to wrench herself free of Irida's merciless grip-

Then, without a hint of a warning, Irida released her hold and stepped back, drawing the saliva-soaked dildo out of Aerith's mouth entirely, leaving the flower girl a coughing, retching, heaving mess. Thick threads of drool spilled from the pretty young woman's lips, streaking down her chin and dripping to the concrete floor, but Aerith was too busy sucking in air to notice, to clear her tear-blurred vision, to _think_ beyond her primal needs. She couldn't take this. The stress, the humiliation, the strain... it was just too much for a girl still unaccustomed to sex, still inexperienced, and she lifted her sagging head to blurt out a plea for it to end-

The second her lips opened, Irida's rubber cock filled the gap.

Aerith's words died in a tangle of sloppy grunts. The thick phallus pressed her writhing tongue flat, surging into her mouth and hitting the back of her throat, making her gag and heave, but this time it didn't linger overlong. Instead, the veiny bulk of it slid back out to her parted teeth, then slowly slipped its way back in, out, in, settling into a rough but even rhythm that limited her air and churned her spit against her tongue but no longer threatened to choke her. There was no breaking away from it - Irida's hands once again gripped her head in place, denying her escape, holding her still while her latex-clad hips pumped back and forth in Aerith's face.

"Pretty sure I said I expect _enthusiasm_."

Her voice icy with disdainful disapproval, Irida kept up the relentless pace, wet sounds filling the otherwise silent dungeon as Aerith reluctantly endured the rough, methodical fucking of her tear-streaked face. "Don't just sit there, you little bitch. Suck it. Lick it. Treat it like a good little whore would, and _maybe_ I'll believe you deserve a reward."

The mention of a 'reward' only struck more fear into the kneeling slum girl's heart, but she knew that she wasn't _really_ being given any sort of genuine choice. Either she obeyed, showed the 'enthusiasm' Irida wanted... or her shame was revealed to every last person she knew.

One humiliation would end the moment she walked out of this hellhole. The other would stay with her for the rest of her life.

Loathing herself, loathing them all for making her complicit in her own humiliation, she did the only thing she _could_ do. She began to suckle at the dildo's rubbery tip as it slid in and out of her mouth like a perverse piston, clumsily amateurish at first, barely knowing what she was doing but desperate to satisfy their repulsive wants if it meant she could save herself.

It was the most degrading thing she had ever done in her life, but she forced her simmering disgust to the back of her mind and tried to forget everything but the nauseating task in front of her. Applying herself to the job at hand, she continued to suck at the slowly thrusting dildo, giving its stiff rubber surface a gentle lick, then another, all the while pretending to herself that it wasn't Aerith Gainsborough on her knees in a sex dungeon, dressed like a prostitute, wrapping her mouth around a dildo that had probably never been cleaned. It was the whore they all wanted, their Ellie, a girl who would cease to exist as soon as the camera was turned off, taking her sins with her.

"Good girl." Irida sounded surprised, her fingertips moving in affectionate trails through brunette hair as she loosened her grip on Aerith's head just a little. "Keep _this_ up and I won't have to fuck your pretty little asshole after all. We'll do it the old fashioned way, my dick, your cunt. I'll bet you're looking forward to that, huh?"

This time when Aerith choked on the dildo, it wasn't because Irida had gone too deep. 

She'd known this was coming, if not today then the next time, or the next. She'd known that sooner or later they would want to go inside of her with more than just their fingers, that she had been lucky to escape it so far into her reluctant career, but it still terrified her to have it so bluntly laid in front of her. Scarlet's fingers, and her own, had been the most substantial things she had ever had inside of her. The thought of being made to take the unnervingly-large strap-on currently plowing her mouth between her legs as well made her heart lurch and her stomach squirm in rebellion. Everything about it was nightmarishly wrong, but...

But in the darkest recesses of her mind, she knew it was inevitable. If they wanted to fuck her, they would. She couldn't stop them. Even if she could bear the evidence of her sordid deeds being spread around the slums she lived in, for all she knew they would simply gang up on her and tie her down if she tried to leave. No, she was _going_ to be fucked before she left this basement, and knowing that made her even _more_ aware of the dildo's worrying size and textured shape as it sloshed in and out of her mouth, a preview of how it would feel when it-

"That should be enough lubrication."

With a heated, satisfied huff, as if Aerith's reluctant mouth had actually pleasured her to completion, Irida released her hold on the flower girl's head and drew the saliva-soaked cock out of its temporary home, spilling another cascade of thick drool down the brunette's quivering chin as she heaved and gasped for breath. Her ruby red lipstick was ruined now, smeared across her lips and chin like a bloodstain, her soft hair disheveled, her cheeks still damp with tears, but none of it inspired Irida to show mercy. She stood over her conquered foe, wearing a wide, crooked grin of pure triumph, one hand meaningfully stroking the glistening length of the toy hanging between her legs.

"Down on your hands and knees," she ordered, enjoying the sight of the flower girl wiping at her abused, dirtied face. "And take your panties off."

There it was. The order she had been dreading. She had expected this moment to come with a fresh wave of chilling, overwhelming panic, but as Aerith grasped the lower reaches of her long red dress and hiked the skirt up over her fishnet-sheathed legs, all she felt was numbness. Resignation. It was just sex, she tried to tell herself as she hitched her skirt around her thighs, her fingers fumbling and slipping as they picked at the suspenders of her garter belt. People had sex all the time. Even if it was with someone she hated, she'd survive. It would all be over in minutes. Just minutes.

Unfastening her suspenders, she hurriedly tucked them out of the way and hooked her fingers into the waistband of the searingly pink panties she had been forced to wear for the occasion. Her body heat had mostly dried them, but the crotch was still faintly cool and damp against her skin, telling the tale of how recently they had been used and for what, and it was with sorely mixed feelings that she peeled the lacy scrap of fabric away from her body and clumsily tugged it down her legs. She was relieved to be rid of the disgusting panties some other girl had soiled with arousal, but without them she was even more vulnerable, her pussy and her ass bared to the world, to the camera.

Tugging the panties over her ankles knocked the bright red heels from her feet, but she didn't care. Hastily tossing the dirtied undergarments aside, she bent herself forward, planting her palms flat against the drool-streaked concrete floor, taking no comfort from the way her skirt fell back down around her legs as her ass arched into the air. She knew its protection wasn't going to last.

" _Ah-ah-ah_." 

A bare foot - Irida's - kicked the scrap of stained pink lace back across the floor to Aerith. "I didn't say you were done with those, did I?"

Aerith looked up at her, confused.

The malevolent grin on Irida's face spread wider. "Put them in your mouth."

_What...?!_

Her face curled in revulsion, nausea twisting her stomach as her eyes traveled back to the skimpy undergarments now resting by her hand. She could smell them from here, the stale reek of sex uncomfortably familiar, disgustingly unmistakable. They were so visibly soiled that she would have been shocked if they had _ever_ been cleaned, and was no question that they had been very recently... _used_.

By Irida, by some other girl, she didn't know which, but it hardly mattered. She would have preferred to take the dildo in her mouth again than _these_.

"...Well?" Arms crossed beneath her latex-hugged breasts, Irida nudged at Aerith's belly with her toe, prodding her into action. "Are you going to do as you're told, Ellie? Or maybe I'm taking you up the ass after all?"

Aerith went rigid at that, her rear passage reflexively clenching. She didn't want _anything_ back there, not even a finger, and the very idea of Irida trying to fit her hideous dildo in her ass was enough to make her snatch up the filthy panties and bring them to her lips, flinching in dismay as the scent of another woman's orgasm flooded her nose. 

Grimacing, sick to her stomach, she opened her mouth and crammed the bundle of pink lace inside before she could rethink her choice, her face contorting in disgust as she closed her red-stained lips around the wad and tasted salty dampness against her tongue. It took all of her willpower not to retch or spit them out, her eyes clamping shut as unidentifiable flavors seeped throughout her mouth, mixing with the lingering taste of rubber cock. Planet, she was going to vomit-

"Very good. Very _obedient_." Irida's feet slapped against the concrete as she spoke, circling back behind Aerith, moving herself into position as the flower girl visibly tensed. "I guess you're _really_ not into anal, hmm? I'll remember that..."

A long, terrible moment of silence. 

"But for now, your pussy will do."

She felt eager hands grasp her skirt and pull it back up, exposing pink folds and alabaster buttocks, but she staved off the urge to pull away and knelt in place on the concrete, bearing Irida's rapt attention in silence. Cool air drifted unsettlingly against her most intimate place as Irida drew out the moment to an intolerable length, deliberately tormenting her, heightening the dreadful anticipation that burned through every inch of her stiffening body.

"So, Ellie..." The gentle stroke of a fingertip tracing the curve of her ass made Aerith shudder and her breath catch, but she made herself endure it without protest, her eyelids resentfully clamping shut as the probing digit journeyed inward, down, seeking out a place it was assuredly _not_ welcome. "Why don't we see just how wet you're getting?"

She wasn't. At all. _None_ of this was arousing to Aerith, the degradation and the throttling of her mouth doing absolutely nothing for her, and this was one surrender that she couldn't fake. She whimpered as Irida's fingers found her pussy and sampled it, swirling determined circles around her labia, her fingers arching white-knuckled against the concrete as she was probed, explored...

"Oh? Looks like you're pretty damp down there, slut."

_Huh...?_

Confused embarrassment gave way to belated understanding. She was just acting for the camera, telling the viewers what they wanted to hear, and soon enough they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. She could hear Irida shifting position behind her, feel the rubber cock jostling against her buttocks, fighting to steady her ragged breathing as she braced her body and soul for what was about to happen.

Irida was not gentle. There was no preparation beyond the cooling spit Aerith had left on the dildo, no foreplay, no easing the flower girl into it. That feral grin still splitting her face, the blue-haired girl leaned over Aerith's kneeling form and _drove_ inside of her, spearing her with the strap-on, the pain and shock of the sudden penetration making the flower girl lurch forward, throw her head back and howl into the panties plugging her mouth.

"Don't you dare spit those out." Irida's arms locked around her waist and ruthlessly pulled her back onto the strap-on, impaling Aerith on its rubber girth and holding her there, forcing her to adjust, her breath hot on the brunette's bare shoulder. "Just hold still and let me do this, like a good little slut. If you're good, you might even get to cum. Would you _like_ that, Ellie?"

Somehow Aerith found the presence of mind to nod, a limp, jerking, broken motion that spilled chestnut bangs across her flushed, smeared, tear-streaked face.

_Just let her do it and get it over with._

Irida needed little encouragement to get down to business. Gripping Aerith's upraised ass, she drew the dildo out of the flower girl's straining pussy, then slammed it back into her with the tenderness of an avalanche, making her shake and scream through her lacy gag as she stretched to accommodate the invading hunk of rubber. A keening sob escaped her stuffed mouth, her hands trembling against the concrete, but it didn't stop her tormentor from returning to the familiar rhythm that had served her so well, the veiny length of the dildo rubbing back and forth against her inner walls as the blue-haired girl finally began to fuck her in earnest.

It hurt. It was humiliating, dehumanizing, reducing what could have been a beautiful thing with the right person to a soulless pantomime, but more than anything it hurt, her pussy only now beginning to lubricate itself as the imitation cock plowed her with only spit for moisture. The first few thrusts were intolerable, so painful that Aerith dreaded that something had torn within her, but even as she began to adjust to the violent tempo of Irida's pounding hips, every rough stab of the dildo brought fresh agony blossoming through her tight-stretched sheath, forcing her body to contort just to fit it in.

This was worse than anything Scarlet had done to her. She would gladly have accepted being chained up and fingered all over again if it meant this could _end_ , but the blond fiend simply watched from the sidelines with Leon, impassive, allowing Irida to do as she pleased. 

This was what she wanted from her. What they all wanted.

The rest was a sickening, nightmarish blur of sweat and pain and flesh on flesh, of bucking and panting and muffled cries. Mercifully, rational thought ebbed away as arousal finally pushed its way into Aerith's mind and took hold, the haze of pleasure it brought doing little to dull her discomfort but smothering her shame enough that she didn't _entirely_ resent the constant friction between her trembling legs. She wasn't proud of the scraps of pleasure she found as Irida fucked an endless string of sloppy, wet noises out of her, but she welcomed them all the same, savoring the desperately needed distraction from the pain and humiliation of being screwed like an animal.

It was just biological, she told herself as the swell of arousal intensified within her, threatening to bring her undone. She couldn't help what she was feeling, what she was being _made_ to feel. Anyone's body would react the same way were they forced through this same brutal stimulation, even Irida's, even Scarlet's, she hadn't wanted this, couldn't control it, couldn't stop herself-

Yet when orgasm finally crashed over her, momentarily blotting out the pain with an incandescent wave of pleasure, Irida's scornful, taunting laughter made her feel like the filthiest girl in Midgar.

Her trembling arms finally gave out as the pleasure subsided, and she collapsed face first to the concrete floor, breasts and cheekbone smacking against the cold, hard surface as the tainted euphoria drained out of her heaving form. She barely felt the dildo pulling out of her still spasming pussy, barely noticed the warm, sticky juices spilling down her thighs, barely heard light footsteps withdrawing, nor louder ones approaching her dazed, panting body.

Glassy green eyes blearily discerned Leon's dirty boot by her forearm, the tiny red light of his camera hovering around her face like a voyeuristic firefly. The thoughtless scumbag was filming her up close, she wearily realized, recording her tearful, smeared face in detail for the company's paying viewers, and with no energy left in her trembling body to defend herself, she let her leaden eyelids fall closed as if they might block the camera's vision as easily as her own.

At least she was probably barely recognizable like this. Sprawled on the cold, stained floor, tarted up and disheveled beyond decency, her normally neat brunette tresses draped over her face like a ragged curtain, she looked nothing like the cheerful young flower girl from the Sector 5 slums, always ready with a smile as warm as the sun she never saw. Even if somebody she passed in the streets wvery day bought the recording of her humiliation and watched it, would they even make the connection? Would they see Aerith in Ellie, or Ellie in Aerith?

She had to believe that they wouldn't. It was the only way she would be able to leave her house again. How many people bought these sordid recordings from Honeybee? Maybe nobody would even want this one. Maybe the viewers would tire of Ellie soon, and she and Scarlet could forget this arrangement had ever happened and move on.

That tiny, comforting hope was the only thing that gave Aerith the strength to rise from the floor, her skirt slipping down to cover her soiled thighs and fishnet stockings as she shakily climbed to her feet. Without looking at any of them for confirmation that they were done, she plucked the soaked pair of panties from her mouth with a final scowl of disgust and dropped them to the floor with a miserable _plop_ , wiping her tongue against the back of her hand to rid herself of the hideous taste. They'd filmed enough of her, surely. They couldn't want more of her after this.

Not today.

Fortunately, it seemed that the three of them agreed with her. The camera was already switched off, Leon returning to the smiling Scarlet's side with a nod of satisfaction, and Irida was circling back around to Aerith's front with her hands reaching behind her waist, unbuckling the harness from her latex-clad hips. "Good show, slut," she crowed with that loathsome smirk on her face, a smirk of victory, of conquest. "Your ass is mine now. Don't you forget it."

A glare, withering and hateful, was the only response that Aerith could manage.

What could she possibly say? No matter what passed between them from now on, Irida would always have _this_ over her. They had had sex, rough, degrading sex, and the sticky wetness clinging to the insides of her thighs was proof that Irida had made her enjoy it. Just looking at her now made bile surge in Aerith's throat.

Her angry glare only seemed to fuel the fire of Irida's malice. Her cruel eyes gloating and spiteful, the blue-haired vixen lifted the molded dildo up for Aerith's inspection, its veiny shaft still slick with the flower girl's juices. "I should've made you lick it clean for the camera," she mused, her smirk cracking wider as Aerith recoiled from the sight and smell of it. "If you did it with Scarlet's fingers, a dildo you've already sucked off shouldn't be a problem, right?"

"I'm surprised that you chose the strap-on to begin with." Scarlet finally broke into the conversation as she sauntered over to join them, saving Aerith from the need to form a coherent answer, and she hated that the presence of the woman who had coerced her into being here perversely made her feel _safer_. "I had assumed that you would have her service you, not the other way around. How uncharacteristically charitable of you."

Aerith didn't know if she would have preferred that or not.

"Oh, trust me, I'm getting myself off the minute I get out of this stuff." Mercifully lowering the soiled strap-on, Irida plucked at the shoulder strap of her latex bra as she stepped back towards the closet at the side of the room, pausing only to pick up the soaked panties Aerith had left behind as if they were pristine laundry. "Gets so fucking _sweaty_. Trust me, I'll be touching myself to these memories for a _loooong_ time. Hell, I might even spring for the video." 

"It's gonna be a good one," Leon helpfully interjected, the grimy cameraman patting the video camera like a faithful pet. "Hate fucks are always big sellers. I guarantee they'll be wanting both of you back for round two."

Aerith could have cried, had she the strength.

"True, perhaps, but I'm afraid that will need to wait." Scarlet stroked her chin in thought, her icy eyes uncomfortably locked on the bedraggled brunette. "I have other plans for her, but for the moment, we're done here. Good job, everyone."

"We really need to go longer with her one of these days." Brazenly stripping off her latex bra, her small breasts popping free as she peeled the shiny blue material away from her pale skin, Irida gave Aerith a sidelong stare, a smug smile darting across her lips. "Build up her endurance. She's getting off way too easy, and I do mean that both ways. I didn't even end up tying her up."

A snort from the blonde-haired beauty. "You're probably right, but for now... your payments are at the front desk. Aerith, there's a washbasin upstairs so you can clean up. I think you've earned the privilege this time. And... here." She extended a manicured, red-nailed hand to the flower girl, presenting her with the bra she had discarded upon entering. "Those clothes are too good to give away, so you can wear the same dress you arrived in, as you seem to have taken such a shine to it. Irida, return her panties, will you?"

Irida muttered something under her breath, but she did snatch up the matching underwear she had left inside the closet, tossing the flowery knickers back across the room just shy of Aerith's clumsily waiting hands. "Was gonna keep them for a trophy," the blue-haired girl grumbled, already halfway out of her own skin-tight panties, stripping herself off without a care in the world.

Aerith's fingers trembled as she did the same, taking hold of her skirt and slowly drawing it up over herself, wincing as her thumbs made accidental contact with the sticky, cooling mess coating her inner thighs. The fractured pleasure she had grudgingly accepted was long gone now, but the pounding ache remained, the pain of being almost split in two by Irida and her vile toy echoing through her loins as she hastily stripped and dressed herself. Panties, bra, dress, boots. Her hairtie was missing, but she didn't care enough to look for it. She had plenty of others. It wasn't worth staying _here_ a moment longer for.

The sooner she had cleaned up, the sooner she was out of this hellhole, and the sooner she could flee home and cry into her pillow and leave everything she had done here behind.

She could only hope that her mother wasn't home yet. She didn't want to have to explain her tears.


	7. Another

_The slave girl will attend the Honeybee dungeon this Friday afternoon, the 8th, at 2pm. She will dress appropriately. Attendance is mandatory._

Aerith read the absurdly formal note for the hundredth time in the five days since she had received it, the howling void in the pit of her stomach yawning just a fraction wider every time her eyes absorbed the insultingly cursive letters enscribed upon the page. She had never been called a slave girl before, and the words alone were enough to make the sickening feeling of degradation swell within her as intensely as if she were back in the dungeon, nude and shackled for the camera. 

They hadn't even bothered to call her by her name, or even her pseudonym. Just 'slave girl', as if that was _all_ that she was, and the more she dwelt on the cruelly blunt words, the more they felt like the truth.

She _was_ their slave. She might be paid for her services, but she had no choice in it.

The words had stung her tattered pride, but whether she liked them or not, they had still left her the challenge of dressing _appropriately_ for a slave, and Aerith had not the faintest clue what that had implied. What precisely were they expecting her to wear? Rags? A servant's clothes? Nothing at all? Every possibility made her cheeks flush a shade deeper, and neither shame nor her wardrobe would accommodate the increasingly lurid thoughts forcing their way into her head. 

Planet, what were they turning her _into_?

Eventually, reluctantly, she settled on one of the skimpier items in her rather sparse wardrobe. Much like the floral bra and panties that she was now forbidden from wearing to the dungeon, she had bought the small black dress to wear for her boyfriend, but it had languished unworn in the back of her closet since before he had been deployed, far less demure than she was comfortable with in public. 

Now that she was wearing it, it was easy to see that she had been right to worry; the thigh-length skirt hugged her ass like a lover, the low-cut bodice doing more to show off her breasts than cover them, her limbs, collar, shoulders all left bared to the world. She could never have worn such a revealing dress out into the squalid maze of the slums - she earned enough catcalls and unwanted touches on a normal day in normal clothing - but it was all that she could think of that might meet the conditions she had been set. A... slave girl would wear revealing clothing, wouldn't she?

Choosing underwear had been no easier. There was no doubt in Aerith's mind that her choice of undergarments would be anything but private, but most of what she owned was cheap and functional, hardly the sort of pretty lingerie Scarlet would expect her to wear for the camera. With her floral set ruled out, she simply hadn't owned anything appropriate... and so she had caved to Scarlet's previous suggestion, squandering some of her most recent payment on a new set of undergarments from one of Wall Market's lurid stores. The unforgivably lacy black bra felt shamefully extravagant as it snugly cupped her bust, the matching panties thinner and more transparent than she had realised in the neon lights of the store, and simply wearing them made her feel more _sexual_ than she ever had outside of that horrid basement.

This wasn't _her_ , but the viewers didn't want Aerith Gainsborough. They wanted Ellie, a girl who _looked_ just like her but didn't share her reservations about sex, whose reluctance was merely vivid acting, who might fuck _them_ given an opportunity and half an excuse. They didn't care who she was, only how she looked when she was tied up and _fucked_ , how she sounded when she cried and when she came...

The urge to retch swelled from nowhere, and she wrapped her arms around her trembling body, holding her emotions inside. She couldn't afford to think like this. She _had_ to go, and thinking about it in any detail would just make her talk herself out of it, only to remember all over again that she didn't have a choice. No, she just had to... go. Get it over with.

As she slipped through the front door of her pleasant little home and into the cruel world outside, she wondered how late she would need to be before Scarlet spread pictures of her from one end of Sector 5 to the other.

~ ~ ~

"Nice dress."

That was what passed for a greeting from her golden-haired antagonist as Aerith reluctantly closed the dungeon door behind her, her hands clutching at her bare arms as the chill of the dismal basement nipped at her skin. She didn't offer an answer, dull green eyes flitting over the dazzling lights and ever-dangling chains, thankfully finding no sign of Irida or of Laurin in evidence. 

No sign of what was to come tonight, either, and that was both a blessing and a curse.

The girls might have been absent, but Leon was there, scruffy as ever, his unkempt ponytail flopping limply behind him as he turned his head from his camera to Aerith. "Sexy," he observed with a lascivious wink. "Wouldn'ta thought a girl like her had something like _that_ in her wardrobe."

Aerith dropped her gaze, wishing she hadn't left her coat upstairs. The dress wasn't _that_ bad, hardly scandalous, but hearing him talk about it that way made it feel like the filthiest thing in the world.

"Well, our Aerith is full of surprises." Her ruby lips curved into a sickeningly familiar, smugly superior smile, Scarlet stalked closer to Aerith than the flower girl was comfortable with, her savage blue eyes roaming up and down as if they could see through the flower girl's clothes. Inspecting her. "So, this is your idea of how a slave girl would dress? Interesting."

"My corset was in the wash." Bitterness seeped from Aerith's snide retort, her eyes flashing with barely leashed rebellion.

"I'm sure we have a latex one that would fit you." Scarlet met her blazing stare with a frigid glare of her own, smothering emerald heat beneath sapphire ice until Aerith finally looked away. Satisfied, the blonde huffed a sigh, the warmth of her breath drifting against Aerith's face. "That aside, I suppose the dress will do. We'll have you out of it soon enough. Lift it up."

It took a moment for Aerith to realize what Scarlet wanted from her, though by now the order to strip should have come as no surprise. 

Squeezing her eyes shut, blocking out the judgmental Scarlet and the leering Leon, she wordlessly grasped her shamefully short skirt and drew it up over her hips and panties, lifting the tight little dress higher and higher until her lace-cupped breasts dropped free. Even now, on her fourth visit to this cesspit, undressing on command was no easier for the flower girl, and she blushed furiously into the thin fabric of her dress as she held it up and let them see, embarrassment mercilessly keen despite the several times they had each seen her naked.

"Good." One word was Scarlet's final appraisal, and Aerith took it as a sign to pull her dress down again, gratefully covering herself up. Her eyes opened, but made the mistake of darting to the greasy cameraman, his lustful stare at her newly covered breasts making her wind her arms back around herself, making her wish she hadn't looked after all. 

Leon snorted at her pitiful attempt to protect herself from his attentions, lazily tilting his head towards his boss in dismissal. "So... where's the other one? You said two girls this time, right?"

Aerith's heart lurched. _Two?_ Not Irida, surely. Planet, please, she couldn't handle that horrible girl now. Not after last time.

"She'll be here." Scarlet answered Leon with absolute certainty, as if she had claimed that spring followed winter, still carefully appraising the flower girl's clinging attire with her manicured fingers folded neatly beneath her chin. "She doesn't have a choice, remember? She'll move when we pull her strings."

Aerith had wondered, more than once, if she was the only person working at Honeybee against her will. Both Irida and Laurin had seemed all too happy to perform for the company, on camera no less, but she had never discovered if they were truly happy in their pornographic careers, or if they had simply become accustomed to their regular degradation and decided to make the most of it. Surely Aerith wasn't the only one being blackmailed to work in this place; threatening her had come too naturally to Scarlet, as if it were an everyday aspect of doing business for her. If she were so inclined, surely she would have a wealth of blackmail material on both Irida and Laurin by now... 

But was it really leverage if they simply didn't care? Perhaps they came here of their own free will. Perhaps they enjoyed doing these tawdry things and getting paid for it, and perhaps they didn't even care that other people were being coerced into it. It was only a possibility, but when Aerith recalled the brutal disregard Irida had shown her when they'd met, when they'd... _interacted_... it was a difficult one to dismiss. If anything, it felt like more of a fact every time the blue-haired minx opened her foul mouth.

Now, at least, Aerith knew that _somebody_ else was being brought down here against her will, and as much as it chafed at the flower girl's gentle heart to know that some other girl was being treated as horribly as she was, forced into sex work against her will, it was a guilty little comfort as well. She wasn't alone.

Still, when the dungeon door finally shrieked open, she forced those selfish thoughts to the back of her head as fast as she could, ashamed.

The girl who stepped through the door was pretty - no, Aerith mentally amended, her breath catching in her throat, she was _beautiful_. Perhaps slightly younger than the flower girl, though a little taller, she was trim, athletic and remarkably gifted in the breast department, her lithe, shapely body brazenly shown off by the tight-fitting black leather intimately hugging her. Her sleeveless vest gripped to her generous bust, her short skirt giving the same tight treatment to her hips and her ass and the slight slivers of thigh it actually touched, her boots and gloves matching black leather as if they had all been fashioned from the very same material. Her eyes were a dark, deep red, her dark brown hair hanging long against her back, her pink lips fixing in an anxious frown as she stepped into the dungeon, surveying her surroundings with tired, jaded eyes. As if she had been here a dozen times before and lived to tell the tale.

Most importantly, she was blessedly unfamiliar.

"I'm here." Her voice steely with resentment, the girl advanced to Aerith's side, barely giving the flower girl a single glance. She crossed her arms over her bust, but Aerith sensed her confidence was feigned, a front. If she didn't want to be here, it was hardly a surprise.

"Tifa." Scarlet's greeting for the newcomer was clipped, almost disdainful, as if she was something she had found stuck to the bottom of her crimson heels. "About time."

The girl - Tifa - flinched, but didn't drop her gaze as Aerith might have under such pressure. "It's only 2pm now. I'm not late."

Clearly displeased at being spoken back to, Scarlet challenged Tifa's stare with her own, but evidently she decided that it wasn't worth the effort, wordlessly turning her back on the girls and stalking back across the basement to an old wooden crate lying by the camera's side. The top surface of the splintery old box was lined with papers, and she stooped to pluck a clipboard from the mess, studying the page clamped to it before turning back to Aerith and Tifa, her composure betraying none of her previous frustration. 

"Tifa, this is Aerith. Ellie while the camera's on. She's relatively new." The taskmistress's pointer finger flitted from the flower girl to the newcomer. "Aerith, meet Tifa. She's been with us for eight months now, and she's still going strong. Her stage name is Tess, but I don't expect you'll be free to call her _anything_ today."

The girls shared a silent glance, mutual uncertainty on their faces.

Scarlet continued without pause, battering them into submission with her whip-like voice. "Tifa, you'll be wearing your domme panties today. Our Aerith here isn't really the dominant type... she is more accustomed to being on the receiving end." 

The flower girl's blazing blush and averted eyes went ignored. 

"She's your slave today. She'll do what you say, without question." Utterly matter-of-fact about it, Scarlet didn't even bother looking at Aerith, treating her as if she were nothing. Leading by example. "Remember what Laurin did with you on your second time with her? This time you will be in control, and Aerith will be your faithful pet." A serpentine smile spread across her face. "It's nothing she isn't used to by now. She only has two vids up for sale so far and she's already our number seven model, so the two of you in one vid together... well, you might even get a bonus out of this if it sells as well as I think it will." 

Aerith could not have cared less about the money. By the distaste on Tifa's face, she was no more joyful at the prospect.

"Oh, don't look so sour, sluts." With a dismissive shake of her head, Scarlet turned her back on the two of them, fingertips pressed against her brow. "Some people _pay_ to have violent, sadomasochistic sex. We're paying _you_ for it. So what if you have a few thousand voyeurs peeking in the door?"

Again, that tremor of disgust on Tifa's features. She wasn't into this, either. Whatever her story was, she was here because she _had_ to be, like Aerith.

Maybe that means that she might go easy on Aerith, especially if the other girl had already been on the receiving end of the same treatment. She might be less brutal with Aerith than Scarlet and Irida had been. It was a vain little hope, but a girl in a sex dungeon should take whatever she could get.

"You know what to do, Tifa." Without even deigning to look back at her, Scarlet flipped her hand in the direction of the endless collection of drawers and boxes at the side of the room, the dreaded places where the tools of the trade lay in wait. "Get her ready. No kid gloves. And _you_ -"

Her hand dropped into the decolletage of her shimmering dress, extracting a thin pink ribbon from between her breasts. Holding it out for Aerith to take.

"Put this in your hair," she commanded, her sapphire eyes demanding Aerith's obedience, and the flower girl reluctantly stepped forward to accept the little scrap of cloth, feeling its flimsy cheapness against her fingertips. "You had something like this the first day you came here. I liked it... and if it appeals to _me_ , I am certain the viewers will like it as well."

It clearly wasn't the precious pink ribbon her boyfriend had given to her - that ribbon was still safely back in her room, hidden away from all of this - but it still stung Aerith to fix her chestnut hair into a ponytail with the little strip of cloth, reclaiming the familiar look that she had tried to leave behind with the rest of her normal life. Forced to take on the appearance _he_ had given her. For _porn_.

If somebody recognized her, she was finished.

Numb, violated, she let her ponytail drift down her back with indifference, gathering her arms around herself and waiting, her eyes on the girl rummaging through the drawers at the edge of the room. Tifa seemed to know what she was doing, what she was looking for, and that was honestly a little intimidating, as if the girl with the grim red eyes belonged here after all.

The way she looked almost natural with a pair of leather cuffs in her hand didn't help.

"Aerith, right?" She spoke with a dull monotone as she glanced over her shoulder at the flower girl, her brown eyes barely seeing her, as if she were just a featureless silhouette of a girl. Was that how she thought of her? As _just another one_? "Once the camera's rolling, I'll have you get undressed on camera, okay? Then I'll tie you up, and-"

"No need to tell her everything in advance." Scarlet cut Tifa off with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Leave her in suspense. It makes her reactions more realistic. She'll follow your orders to the letter, so don't worry about planning it out with her beforehand." Those cold blue eyes found Aerith once before, pinning her down, stabbing her soul. "Won't you, Aerith?"

Aerith nodded, leaden with resentment.

"...Fine." Her voice still betraying nothing, Tifa's face disappeared behind dark, glossy hair as she turned back to her work. Perhaps it was Aerith's imagination, fueled by terror and running wild, but she sensed biter resignation in the other girl's every action. The acceptance of what she had to do, and to whom.

If Aerith had not been so terrified, she might have found sympathy in her heart.

~ ~ ~

Tifa allowed her to keep her panties.

It was a small thing to be grateful for, but when her shoes and dress and bra were scattered around her kneeling body, cast aside one at a time at her new mistress's orders, Aerith appreciated the kindness of the gesture. It was the only mercy she expected to receive today, and she savored it for all it was worth.

After all, she had a task to perform.

The focus of that task sat before her now, slouched in a simple wooden chair, her legs spread wide open as if modesty was a thing for lesser women. Completely nude, her bare breasts hanging free and proud, the girl called Tifa idly toyed with her clit, teasing the sensitive nub in slow little circles, a breathless gasp bursting from her parted mouth as her hips bucked of their own accord, delighted with the attention she was lavishing upon herself.

The one hand was busy enough for both of them, but her other was resting upon the crown of Aerith's head, seeing to a job of its own. Stroking the flower girl's chestnut tresses. Flirting with her borrowed ribbon, as if she might tease it loose and send her locks spilling back to her shoulders. 

Holding her in place as her innocent tongue was made to plumb the warm folds and slick depths of Tifa's cunt.

Her hands were cuffed together behind her back, her ankles fastened with rope at ankle and knee to keep her kneeling, a thin black scarf tied over her eyes to blindfold her. She could see nothing but blackness, hear nothing but the wet sounds of her sordid work and the heated moans born from it, but the scent and taste of pussy were overpowering to the inexperienced flower girl, salting her tongue and staining her blushing face as she clumsily worked to please a complete stranger. She wanted to be sick, but she kept her tongue awkwardly sliding and slithering against the athletic girl's intimate flesh, knowing that the only way this would end was by bringing Tifa to a climax.

Even if that meant getting a front-row seat.

"Hnnh..." A breathy moan exploded from Tifa's throat as Aerith's nose nudged against her clit, pushing the other girl's finger out of the way. It had been purely an accident - Aerith was simply not skilled enough at oral sex to come up with the idea on her own - but it was no less appreciated for it. The other girl's pussy jammed itself against her face as she bucked in her seat, soaked flesh rubbing sticky trails against Aerith's flushed skin. She could feel short, warm hairs dancing against her forehead, two hands grasping her scalp as Tifa moved to take full control of her, holding her in place, suffocating her in hot, wet softness-

Then she was thrust backward, cold air licking at the flower girl's drenched face as she was freed from the trap of Tifa's thighs. Her bangs settling against forehead in messy, clinging clumps, she gratefully sucked in precious oxygen through sickeningly slick lips, caring little that she was inhaling more of Tifa's musk along with it.

She would take what she could get.

~ ~ ~

Aerith couldn't see it through her sopping blindfold, but Tifa was staring down at her as she struggled for breath, apology flashing in her deep red eyes amid the haze of animal lust. 

It was impossible not to feel terrible guilt as she looked down upon the soiled, gasping young woman between her legs, guilt for what she'd done and from the pleasure her body was taking from it... but remorse wouldn't stop her from forcing the slum girl right back to work the moment she had recovered. As far as Honeybee's customers would know she was in full control of the situation, but her feelings didn't matter here any more than Aerith's did. They were both puppets, Scarlet's demands hanging over them like a sword dangling by a thread, and they would play their roles until the finish if they knew what was good for them.

Aerith's unskilled tongue might have been working her into a lather down there, but Tifa didn't want this any more than she did. She didn't _want_ to be here in a sex dungeon, clothes shed, legs spread, allowing a total stranger to eat her out in front of a camera and a pair of sadistic perverts. She didn't _want_ to come when Scarlet called her, much less degrade herself on command. She didn't _want_ to force herself on an innocent girl, pretty as Aerith admittedly was.

No, she didn't want this. Any of it.

She didn't want to be reaching for the riding crop Scarlet had pressed into her hand, either, but her fingers still closed around the leather grip with grim resolution, those cold blue eyes urging her on from afar.

_I'm sorry, Aerith._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would feel a lot better about taking so long with this chapter if the result was better than this.


	8. After

The blindfold tied tight over her tearful eyes, her ears pressed against the firm flesh of Tifa's inner thighs, Aerith knew nothing of the riding crop in the other girl's hand until the bulky tip thudded against her back.

The resounding impact of heavy leather against creamy skin made her scream into Tifa's sopping cunt.

She tried to twist away, startled and hurting, but a firm hand on her scalp kept the flower girl down and still, her knees pressed against the floor and her mouth pressed against pussy. 

There was no fighting it with her hands cuffed behind her back, no rising to her feet with her calves lashed tight to her thighs. They had bound Aerith beyond resistance, and there was nowhere to run even if she hadn't been utterly helpless; she was locked in a basement beneath one of the worst districts in all of Midgar, surrounded by the very people who had forced her into this, stripped down to nothing but her panties. They could _kill_ her if they wanted to and nobody would ever know what happened to her. She was lucky that hurting her and forcing her into sex was _all_ they wanted.

They couldn't profit from her humiliation if she was dead, after all.

"Don't you dare stop." Tifa's knife-sharp voice cut into her thoughts, the crop slamming into Aerith's back with a vicious smack that gouged another yelp out of her and made her recoil Then, another, harder, and the flower girl did well to keep herself to a strangled sob, though perhaps Tifa's pussy blotted out the worst of the sound. "Keep going, you little slut. The longer you take, the more I'll hurt you, so..."

Leather slapped flesh, and Aerith hissed against Tifa's cunt. 

"Hurry the fuck up and make me cum."

It was the only way out. The only way to make it stop. With this bitter knowledge at the front of her whirling mind, Aerith reluctantly extended her tongue and lapped at Tifa's arousal-slick pussy anew, the taste and texture and scent of her warm, slippery flesh immediately making her regret it. Wetness clung to her blush-seared face, soft, short hairs brushing against her forehead, but she made herself do as she was commanded despite the unpleasant sensations hounding her, urgently running her tongue against the younger girl's damp folds, desperately trying her best to please her. To get it over with and be done with this humiliation.

She knew how she best liked to touch herself, cloistered in the sanctity and security of her bedroom. She applied that knowledge to Tifa's pussy now, using her clumsy tongue rather than her practiced fingers, ignoring the pain the crop left behind and the cold of the floor against her knees and the stares she could feel tracing over her naked skin. She licked, kissed, sucked, did every little thing she could think of, forgot everything but Tifa's pussy and her horrible task, forgot the taste and the smell, forgot herself.

Her rewards for her efforts were scattered and unpredictable. A gasp. A purr. A tug of her chestnut hair. A vicious slap of the crop against her back, her arm, her panty-clad ass. Aerith endured it all riding it out with unseen tears running down her face, her yelps and whimpers lost between Tifa's thighs as she devoted herself to teasing, coaxing, stimulating...

When Tifa threw her head back and came at last, gripping Aerith's head between her thighs as she moaned and spasmed and thrust her squirting crotch in the flower girl's face, the blindfolded girl was so tired and so grateful it was over that she tolerated the hot jet of cum that shot down her throat with no complaint but a startled, stifled groan of discontent.

Only when the younger girl was utterly spent and satisfied did she release her captive from her sticky, musky prison, callously shoving the debased flower girl to the floor with the palm of her hand, thrusting her aside like she was less than nothing.

It had never felt more like the truth.

~ ~ ~

As the hot rush of orgasm messily ebbed away, the pleasant haze slowly fading from Tifa's mind and slumping, naked body, all that she was left with for her exertions was the creeping feeling that she might be the worst piece of shit in Midgar.

She hadn't been given a choice any more than Aerith had, but she was the one with crop in hand as the new girl lay at her feet in blindfold and panties and not a lot else. She was the one responsible for the marks on Aerith's back and her handcuffed arms, for the wetness soaking the poor thing's face, the way her body shuddered with shivers and ragged breaths.

Once, she had been the one in Aerith's position. Months ago, she had been the one on her knees on this very spot, clumsily eating the pussy of another woman she had only just met, enduring a rain of physical and verbal abuse that she had been helpless to stop. Laurin had been far, far crueler with tongue and crop alike, and Tifa had been a stinging, shivering mess by the time she was done, more than one orgasm sprayed across her exhausted face.

She'd wondered how a human being could do that to someone else. Now she knew.

Off-camera, Scarlet was still watching her, arms crossed beneath her breasts. Tifa had expected the blonde-haired sadist to look satisfied with herself, pleased at what she had made her puppets do, but instead it was discontent she found on the statuesque woman's wintery face. Annoyance.

She mouthed two words with those ruby lips, and Tifa's heart sank.

Still, the camera was rolling, and she knew what would happen to her if she ruined this now. She only wished that Aerith could hear the apologies echoing through her head as she reached down and grasped the base of the flower girl's ponytail, tugging gently, hoping she would take the hint and rise.

She didn't. Aerith remained limp, offering not even the limited aid her tightly bound body could have managed, forcing Tifa to drag the flower girl up to her knees by her hair. 

Aerith whimpered, but she didn't resist. It was easier for both of them this way.

The last thing in the world Tifa wanted to do right now was look her in the eye, but her shaking hands unfastened the blindfold tied around Aerith's head, reluctantly sliding the soaked cloth away from the slum girl's face and uncovering the misery beneath. Tearful eyes peered back up at her, adjusting to the light with rapid blinks, but though they were looking straight at Tifa, brilliant green accusing soulful red, they barely seemed to _see_ her.

Tifa saw herself in those eyes. Herself before she had let this place jade her.

The poor girl had had enough, but Tifa knew what Scarlet wanted from them. What she demanded. Keeping her resentment and pity from her face, concealed behind a carefully constructed facade of indifference, she leaned down and kissed the bedraggled flower girl, hard and deep and slow, the taste of her own slick still fresh on the other woman's lips. It was a taste she was sickeningly accustomed to now, after so long in the service of Honeybee, but mixed with the gentle sweetness of Aerith's mouth it was a new experience, too, if one she hardly relished.

Aerith didn't resist, but nor did she kiss Tifa back. She just took it, endured it but offered nothing, and it was all that she could expect from her but still the rejection stung. 

Tifa had never blamed Aerith for her part in this. She hoped the pretty slum girl felt the same about her.

~ ~ ~

They dressed themselves in silence.

The small black dress covering at least some of her reddened skin, and the coat she had left upstairs would cover the rest, but it still felt as if anyone Aerith passed in the streets of Wall Market would know where she had been and what she had done. Her face was clumsily wiped clean of Tifa's leavings, her chestnut bangs drying at last, but she still felt less than she had been, a whore another time over, tawdry and worthless.

The cheap pink ribbon Scarlet had forced on her lingered in her hair, forgotten.

She hadn't looked at Tifa since the kiss, lowering her head when the other girl had unbound her, too miserable and angry to spare a word or a glance. On some level she knew it wasn't Tifa's fault, that she was as much a victim here as Aerith, but it had been _her_ hand, _her_ pussy, and that was not so simply forgotten. 

Back in her black leathers again, Tifa wished she could find words that could mend the scars she had surely left, but there was nothing she could say with lips that still tasted of the flower girl's mouth and her own distressingly strong orgasm. Aerith hated her, of course; she wouldn't even look at her, and the quicker she could forget that Tifa existed, the happier she would surely be.

Even so, all Tifa wanted to do was to embrace her and apologise. Tell her she hadn't wanted it. Beg forgiveness.

Scarlet said the things she always said. Leon looked at them both as he always did. Everything unfurled as it always did as Aerith and Tifa pulled the scraps of their dignity around themselves and tried to pretend that it was over, that they would never be back here again, that there was no evidence and nobody would ever know. Even to Aerith it was hollow, a paper-thin pretense, but to Tifa, who had been here again and again, with no way out no matter how often they fucked and degraded her...

She wondered if it was ever going to end.

That was why she did it. Why she waited outside of the horrible little sex store, a beautiful young woman in her tight leather clothing in the worst district in the city, and stepped in front of Aerith as the flower girl tried to leave, the look on her face begging for a chance to make things right. 

If things were going to change even a little, she had to make it happen herself.

~ ~ ~

"I'd never have guessed you worked in a bar."

It wasn't much of an establishment, the small room dingy but for the garish neon lights, cluttered with mismatched stools and tables and nearly empty of customers, but Seventh Heaven was cozy and welcoming nonetheless, though perhaps that was the influence of the woman behind the bar. Still dressed in leather, though with a jacket now drawn over her bust-hugging vest, Tifa gave a little shrug and a half-genuine smile as she placed a glass of water onto the counter in front of Aerith. "I'd never have guessed you sold flowers."

Accepting that observation - it must have been hard to think of her peddling roses in the street when she was on her knees, half-naked and handcuffed - Aerith took a hesitant sip of her water as if she had expected it to taste strange, relaxing and drinking a little more when she had confirmed to herself that it was normal. Why on the Planet had she come here? Had she really needed companionship that badly? Understanding?

...Well, yes, she had. Tifa was the only person she knew from Honeybee who wasn't hostile or unsafe, the only person who knew what she did when she went out without her flowers, and after so many visits to Honeybee Productions and their desolate dungeon, she was running out of room inside herself to hide away the thoughts and memories she had been burying. Outside that basement she wasn't the girl who had sex with people who abused her, who let herself be tied up and beaten, and it was perfectly reasonable that everyday Tifa might not be the same person whose crotch her tongue had been buried in just minutes ago. Maybe she deserved a chance.

"Don't you ever worry? That..." Aerith swallowed. "That people who come here might know who you are? They might have seen... um..."

"A few of them do know." Tifa grimaced, her palms flat on the counter, her tone resigned and weary. "They're not shy about letting me know it, either. One or two try to get me in bed, but if they get handsy, so do I. And believe me, I know how to throw a punch."

With her athletic, toned body, Aerith wasn't in the least surprised, but Tifa's admission had given her something else to fret about, and she cast a searching glance around the bar, hoping that none of the handful of patrons were looking at her. Two were, a couple of large, bearded men in the corner, all leather and muscle and sweat, though both looked away when they saw her head turn, finding more of interest in their drinks. Were _they_ Honeybee fans? Had _they_ seen Tifa on film, tied up and abused?

What if those weren't the only videos they'd seen? What if they'd seen _her_?

"So... you're not one of the contracted staff either, huh?" Her lips pursed, Tifa fished a rag from beneath the bar and began to scrub at the rough, stained surface, as if she could lift away a mark that had been there for longer than she had been alive. An excuse not to look at her guest, a desire that Aerith understood all too well. "You're... you don't want to be there. Like me. They're forcing you."

"....Yeah." Her own eyes lowered, her hand white-knuckled around her glass, Aerith exhaled slowly, letting out a breath it felt like she had been holding since she had stepped out of that disgusting basement. "They are."

Tifa sighed, but she didn't look up, applying herself to her work as if she had a chance of getting it done. "Money? Blackmail?"

"Both." Aerith was surprised with how easily the admission fell out of her mouth. "They... my mother... she's sick. I need money. But..."

"But they won't let you back out once they have you on film." Tifa's fist slammed against the bar, still clutching the cleaning rag, and the bar's other patrons looked up, only to avert their gazes before she could find fault with them. Aerith was just thankful that the other girl's voice was too low and taut to be easily heard through the low but dense layer of chatter that filled the bar. "They threaten you. Maybe they even tell your sick mom what you did to get that medicine money, right?"

Aerith just nodded, numb. It hadn't taken much guesswork.

Tifa's jaw tightened. "The sick fucks. Never met a girl they wouldn't take advantage of."

She said nothing else, just feverishly scrubbed at the bar, shifting to another spot when it became clear that the lingering stain she'd victimized wasn't going anywhere. It took another few sips of water for Aerith to find the nerve to speak, bracing for the backlash she half-expected. "So they're... forcing you, too."

"Yeah." The smile on Tifa's face was no true smile at all. "Yeah, they are. That bitch Scarlet... she's got dirt on friends of mine. Could have them sent to prison for the rest of their lives. She won't, though, not so long as she can get a pretty new whore out of it who'll do whatever she wants." A snarl, strangled to a low growl for the sake of the patrons. "So yeah, we're in the same boat. Doesn't mean I shouldn't apologize for what I did to you."

"It's not your fault." Ignoring the resentful part of herself that hadn't forgotten a single slap of the crop, Aerith forced herself to smile as much as her wounded soul could manage. It wasn't much, but it was something. "I just... I just want to be done with it. I want it to _stop_."

"It won't stop." Scrubbing at the bar as if her life depended on it, Tifa still didn't look up, her voice tight and flat. "They'll keep calling. They'll keep wanting you. So my advice is to find a liking for S&M and degrading sex, like some of the contracted girls, or run. Leave your life behind and get the hell out of Midgar. Though..." She finally lifted her gaze, sympathy dwelling there. "That's not an option, is it? It never is."

Aerith didn't answer, but her lowered eyes told the tale.

"They'll move you onto the harder shit soon." As much as Tifa wanted to go easy on her, Aerith needed to hear this, and it was better that she learn it from her than from Scarlet the next time she was in the dungeon. "Longer shoots. More difficult ones. Sex with men, if they haven't made you do that already." The way Aerith tensed told Tifa that they hadn't. "They're tested and everything, and they'll make sure you don't get pregnant, but they won't be gentle, and that's... not the worst of what they'll make you do."

She cut herself off there. There was a difference between informing Aerith and just plain scaring her.

Fortunately, Aerith didn't care to ask what she meant. The flower girl was silent, turning dark thoughts over in her head. Eight months, Scarlet had said. Tifa had been with them for eight months, and the bartender seemed to have no hope that this would stop. Was that was awaited her, too? Months and months of being _used_ like this, with no merciful end in sight? Was there really no way out?

For a minute, she genuinely considered telling Scarlet and her sick company to go to hell. Bearing the consequences and moving on with her life. Anything to avoid ending up like Tifa.

The disappointment she imagined in her mother's eyes when she found out how her daughter had paid for her medicine snuffed that dream out like a smothered candle.

Aerith was no longer alone, but the two of them were trapped in this together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter, but I needed to get through this scene after leaving it hanging for so long.


	9. Theater

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains male/female sex. More on this in the notes at the bottom of the chapter, but be warned that you might want to skip this chapter (and only this chapter) if that isn't for you.

_Honeybee dungeon, 8am on the morning of Tuesday the 26th. Attendance is mandatory. Your choice of clothing is unimportant, but bring the ribbon. Session will end no earlier than 5pm._

The sickening dread that haunted Aerith after a message from Scarlet was no stranger by now, but she never truly became used to the leaden feeling in her stomach, the fluttering of her heart, the grey haze that seemed to descend upon her life every time she received her orders and knew that she must fulfill them.

She had learned not to torture herself with thoughts of disobedience. Every time she saw her mother's smile, felt her arms around her, disappointing her with the truth became less and less of an option. 

It didn't matter what she wore, and she had not the heart to put any effort into her appearance on the morning of her 'appointment', so she pulled on the oldest undergarments she hadn't gotten around to throwing away, the same blue sundress they had given her in the first place, her unflattering but comfortable leather boots. Fortunately, she hadn't thrown away the cheap pink ribbon Scarlet had foisted upon her last time, tying the imitation in place around her chestnut ponytail, leaving the treasured decoration her boyfriend had given her safely at home with her pride.

As she stared into her bedroom mirror, she wondered if the girl she saw there was Aerith or Ellie.

~ ~ ~

Although she reached the dishearteningly familiar adult store without difficulty, Aerith was accosted before she ever reached the dungeon door, a man she had never seen before ushering her into a side room that she had never noticed before by her arm. Brusquely ordering her to put on the clothing she would find inside, he slammed the door shut without a word, barely even glancing at her face or her body. To him, she presumed with creeping unease, she was _just another one_.

Still, it was better than having him stay here and watch her undress. Rubbing at the arm he'd nearly twisted from her body, Aerith turned and scanned the dilapidated changing room he'd half-thrown her into, wondering just what sort of skimpy lace or skin-tight leather they meant to force her into...

Whatever clothing she had expected to find waiting for her, the collection of metal and leather and thick blue cloth draped over the nearby table wasn't it.

A Shinra soldier's uniform.

Aerith recoiled, as if the pile of clothes had tried to bite her. She had always hated the Shinra, the power company with more control over the filthy cauldron of a metropolis than the mayor could ever have dreamed of, lording it over Midgar from on high while the people of the slums suffered. She despised their soldiers with their guns and their helmets with their three red eyes, and it was a relief that neither of those items were in evidence here but the garb still repulsed her, a reminder of the true authority in this city. The law that had no interest in helping the downtrodden. Helping her.

Was this _really_ what they wanted her to wear? Thick, obscuring military gear that reeked of stale sweat? It seemed ridiculous, but there was no sign of any other clothing in the room, and so she reluctantly stripped her dress over her head and placed it aside, wrinkling her nose as she approached the pile of cloth and metal. Where did they even get this?

A scrap of white lace caught Aerith's eye amid the dark blue heap of the uniform and the dull, menacing grey of the pauldrons and knee-guards, and she pulled it out with pursed lips, holding the silky panties between finger and thumb. A matching bra was hidden away in there as well, she discovered, as ridiculous as the frivolous lingerie appeared next to the callously utilitarian soldier's uniform. So they did expect her to wear underwear under the uniform...

Of course they did. She would be lucky if she were fully clothed for two minutes.

It was a good thing that they had provided undergarments for her, she admitted to herself as she hurriedly stripped off before the goon could come back to collect her. If she undressed on camera to reveal the threadbare undergarments she was wearing now, Scarlet would make her regret it.

They fit her perfectly, she discovered as she pulled the silken panties up to her hips and hooked the lacy bra over her shoulders. The casual reminder that they knew her body inside and out made her feel exposed even in the privacy of the changing room... _if_ the changing room was even private in the first place, she considered with crawling skin and turning stomach. She wouldn't put it past them to hide a camera in here somewhere...

She had never imagined that she would be so eager to pull on a Shinra uniform.

Unlike the underwear, the soldier's garb didn't fit her well. It was clearly a man's uniform - she had never seen a female Shinra soldier, now that she thought about it - the top half stiff and tight across her breasts, the pauldrons awkward and heavy atop her shoulders, the pants baggy and thick around her slender legs. Without the uniform's usual three-eyed helmet to hide it away, her chestnut hair flowed down her back still tied in its pink ribbon, her wan face still looking back at her as she glanced into the grimy full-length mirror in the corner of the room. Planet, she looked like a little girl playing dress-up...

The uniform of the Shinra made her feel dirtier than wearing the dungeon's stained lingerie had.

Only moments passed before a heavy knock at the door broke her out of her thoughts, the thin wood shuddering with each rough impact. "You done in there?" bellowed the impatient voice of the man who had thrown her in here. "We're on a schedule."

Unable to bear looking at herself like this for a second longer, Aerith turned away from the mirror in disgust. 

"I'll be right there."

~ ~ ~

The dungeon they brought her to barely looked like a dungeon at all.

Rather than the dirty concrete and chains as far as the eye could see that Aerith learned to expect, this new chamber was walled in by wood, gentle blue light shining from an open window that had to be fake behind the bamboo blind. Mats of woven rattan were laid across the floorboards, and the men standing there waiting for her were dressed like nobody she had ever seen before, green tunics and wide-legged pants in a style she didn't recognize, but also bearing the visored helmets and poleaxes that marked them as some kind of warrior.

Soldiers of Wutai, or at least men dressed as them.

As she took the scene in, the pieces of the puzzle began to assemble themselves in Aerith's wary mind. Them, the fighting men from an enemy nation across the sea. She, the lone, inexplicably female trooper of Shinra with sexy lingerie beneath her uniform. On the nearby table, piles upon piles of thin, coarse rope.

Scarlet, lingering in characteristic red, simply confirmed the reality for her.

"They're going to rape you." She was as matter-of-fact as ever about the darkest of subjects, caring little for the way the color drained from Aerith's face as her fate unfurled before her. "You are the pretty soldier captured by the enemy in wartime. They are the scary foreign soldiers here to take advantage of you. Torture you. Whatever they damn well please." She picked at a crimson fingernail as she spoke, not even bothering to glance at Aerith, as if she were simply an automaton to be programmed with her commands. "You won't have to do much that won't come naturally to you, but at least try to look defiant in the early stages. You're a Shinra trooper today, not some slum-dwelling slut."

"How... how long...?" It had been a question Aerith hadn't wanted to ask, lest she hear the answer, but she couldn't quite bring herself to believe that the times listed on the letter were a mistake.

"You should expect to be here until 5." Finally Scarlet deigned to look her in the eye, though the predatory gleam in her savage blue eyes made Aerith wish that she hadn't. "This will be longer than anything you have filmed, by far. There will be breaks between scenes, and you will be fed, but we are not going to go easy on you. You're a veteran now, Aerith, and we are going to treat you like one."

The floor seemed to flow beneath her feet, her head swimming as Scarlet and Leon set up the cameras, more than one this time. The men were watching her, and she didn't need to be able to see their eyes through their visors to know what they were thinking. Anticipating.

For all the violation that the women of Honeybee had forced upon her, she had never been with a man before, and every time she had been made to suffer at the hands of a female, a part of her had whispered that _at least it wasn't a man, at least she had been spared that_. She had never figured out why she so dreaded it when she was heterosexual to begin with, but she had, and now that last wall was coming down. She would have sex today, not just with a man, but with _men_.

Not with Zack, wherever he was, but with strangers.

She wanted to run, more than she ever had before, but she didn't, standing by as the cameras were prepared, listening fearfully as last-minute instructions were given, allowing them to bind her forearms flat across her back and harness them to her torso with ropes wrapped tight above and below her bust. Scarlet would take what she wanted from her no matter what she did, what she wanted, what she thought. She had no defense. No way out. There was no point defying them. The only thing she could do was bear it and try to forget when she was done.

_It won't stop. They'll keep calling. They'll keep wanting you._ Tifa's words lingered in her mind, though she had known the truth of them before they had ever been spoken. This was a prison of her own making, in a fashion - only her own will kept her trapped within - but it held her confined as securely as the ropes chafing her exposed forearms and digging into her breasts through the uniform. She would rather let them dress her up like this and fuck her for hours on end than confess the truth to her mother.

Wouldn't she?

The thought of telling them to stop and untie her flitted across her mind - as if they would have - but before she could make her decision she was gagged, an earthy wooden bit forced between her teeth and knotted in place with cord, oily and rough against her tongue. It trapped her jaw uncomfortably open, ground against her teeth, but she bore it with silent resentment, fiery green eyes lowered. Planet knew they'd put worse things in her mouth.

"We're ready. You can begin." Nodding to the men, Scarlet joined Leon beyond the view of the camera, and the other performers began to move, as if they had received precise orders that they hadn't bothered to inform Aerith about. Two remained in the middle of the room, while the third took Aerith by her upper arm and led her off set so roughly that she almost stumbled, a brusqueness that did not bode well for her treatment today.

~ ~ ~

"Commander! Look what we found sneaking around the perimeter!"

The two soldiers on camera in the center of the room turned to observe as the third entered the set, bundling Aerith into the frame by the collection of knots gathered at her back. She had no need to feign discomfort for the camera - the ropes cut at her skin through her uniform as she was hauled about like cargo, clutching at her arms and chest, as much a torture as a prison. She felt ridiculous, the baggy pants and thick vest of the uniform hanging off of her slender frame, but no-one else was laughing, the grim scene set with utter seriousness.

Aerith couldn't find laughter within herself either.

" _Shinra dog._ " The lower half of the face of the 'commander' twisted in loathing, a more believable expression of hate than she would have expected from an actor in a porn video. She wondered if the men were willing participants, or if they had as little choice as she did. "Was she alone?"

"No, sir!" The soldier with hands on Aerith's body guided her to the center of the room, placing her right in the middle of the three of them, the implication dreadfully clear. "There were others with her, but they got away. We lost them."

This news clearly did not please the 'commander', his lips curving into a disapproving frown beneath his visor, but his irritation dropped away as he turned his helmet's soulless gaze upon Aerith, looking her up and down, leaving her grateful for the first time for the obscuring bulk of the trooper uniform. In the moment, with the ropes tight around her body and the camera and observers out of her view, it was easy to forget that the commander was just an actor, that she wasn't a prisoner in the foreign lands of Wutai after all.

Yet a prisoner still, and still fated to suffer.

"Lucky for us, we have someone here who can tell us _all about_ her unit and where they've hidden themselves away." The commander cupped Aerith's chin in a gloved hand and lifted, staring into her fearful eyes through his visor, his thumb playing against her cheek and lips twisted around the drool-slick bit. "Won't you, eastern bitch? You'll tell us everything we want to know."

_At least try to look defiant,_ Scarlet had ordered. Aerith tried, but she couldn't imagine that her attempt at a fierce glare was terribly convincing, even without the gag tied between her teeth. The last thing she wanted was to give them an excuse to abuse her... though there was no doubt that it was going to happen, no matter what she did or didn't do. That was what they were here for. What the customers were paying for.

"Hm." He held her gaze for a moment longer, then stepped back with a sneer, releasing her head to hang meekly as he leered along with his two colleagues. "You can act as brave as you want, but you _will_ break. Everyone does."

Aerith couldn't question it. This place was enough to break anyone.

"Strip her." The order was given without bothering to look at her, the commander motioning his men into action with a wave of his hand, and they showed no hesitation in complying, as soldiers should. Hands went to belts and drew kunai from sheathes, the nearness of the sharp little blades making Aerith tense in genuine fear. They didn't mean to _cut_ the uniform off of her, did they...?

"Stay still," one of the men hissed against her ear, his breath thick and foul, and for her own good Aerith obeyed as blades were drawn against her clothing.

The kunai sliced apart the front of her thick soldier's uniform as if it were made of the cheapest cotton, ripping open the suffocating blue cloth from her collar to her waist as she held her breath and prayed to the Planet. To her immense relief, they were uncommonly skilful in avoiding her vulnerable flesh, not to mention the ropes wound about her body and the lacy silk of her bra, efficiently tugging the ragged remains of the top back to expose silk-cupped breasts mercilessly squeezed by her bonds. Her boots were taken and thrown aside, her too-large pants torn down her legs and over her ankles to leave her with nothing but panties below the waist, knee-guards and pauldrons and everything else stripped from her by uncaring hands until she stood in nothing but lingerie and rope and blushing shame.

Tied up and half-naked, on camera, _again_.

"Let her speak," the commander ordered, and one of the men - Aerith had lost track of which was which - untied the gag and wrested the wooden bit from her mouth. She worked her jaw, wishing she could get away with spitting the earthy taste from her mouth.

"Now..." Leaning back onto the table, completely relaxed and in charge, the commander met her eyes behind his visor, lips compressed into a thoughtful line. "Your little Shinra hideout. Where is it?"

What was she _supposed_ to say? She knew nothing of Wutaian geography, and they hadn't fed her an answer before the cameras started rolling. Was she supposed to know? Was she meant to refuse to answer? "I-I don't know..."

"She doesn't know." The commander turned his hidden gaze to the men, regarding them solemnly for a long moment... and then the three of them burst into laughter, spittle raining against Aerith's cheek as one of the underlings howled in her face.

"She doesn't know! Doesn't know where her own hideout is." When the mirth had dimmed, the commander slapped a hand onto the table at his back, breathing a heavy sigh. "So that's how you want to be then, eastern whore."

What stung Aerith the most about the insult was how little it stung at all. _Whore_. She had called herself that enough in her darker moments to know that it was the truth now, whether she wanted it to be or not.

The commander's nod to the men went unseen by the bound flower girl, but the results of it would be impossible for her to miss so easily. Firm hands gripped her naked shoulders and her upper arms, both men seizing hold of her and propelling her forward, the commander stepping aside at the last moment to allow the soldiers the space to bend the startled Aerith over the table and slam her face down onto the rough, flat surface. A stunned yelp burst from the flower girl's throat as her chin and her bare breasts smacked violently against the table, pain thudding across her chest and screaming through her jaw, but there was no time to think, no time to beg as one of the men held her down and the other took hold of her panties, ripped them down her legs, exposing her ass and her pussy to all three of the strange men she had never met before...

The camera couldn't see her rear from this angle, but it didn't even matter when the most intimate parts of her were brazenly presented to a gang of complete strangers who likely viewed her as just something to fuck for money. Planet, she wished the impact had made her bite her tongue, maybe she could have died-

"Last chance," the commander snarled, his gloved hand seizing Aerith's unwillingly offered ass and squeezing, _claiming_ , "Where is your unit hiding? Tell me."

"I-I don't know!" Aerith didn't need to act frightened; she was terrified, panicking, the reality of what was about to happen to her hitting home with a sledgehammer's force. She knew that they meant to fuck her no matter what answer she gave, but there had to be some way she could stop this - maybe the men were more merciful than Scarlet, maybe if they knew that she was here against her will... "Please stop! I don't want to do this! Please don't-!"

A mouthful of silken panties stilled the flower girl's tongue, a glove clamping over her lips to hold them inside as desperate pleas ended in a muffled tangle of frantic sounds. Her face twisted in disgust, but she didn't care about the taste anymore, nor even the humiliation - she just wanted to speak, beg them to stop before they-

A hot, hard spike of flesh drove inside of her without warning, masculine hips slamming against her ass as a cock hilted itself deep in her unprepared pussy, her muffled scream spurring a round of rough, uncaring laughter.

It was no strap-on this time - no, Aerith was not so lucky. The manhood spearing into her body was the real thing this time, her pussy feeling every inch of the thick, warm flesh it was forced to accept, and though it didn't stretch her as much as Irida's toy had, it was somehow worse for it to be a genuine cock, something that could _feel_ her inner walls squeezing it, feel the way her pussy began to moisten against her will, feel the way she shook beneath him as he drew out of her and sheathed himself once more. He leaned over her as he fucked her, his chest pressed flat against her back and her tightly bound arms, his hand still clamped over her mouth to hold her panties inside as he heaved heavy breaths and gasping grunts against her ear, ran his free hair through her brunette locks and gripped them tight enough to sting...

She tried to block it out, her thoughts retreating behind the familiar wall of blank numbness that had served her well on so many nights alone with her thoughts, but there was no ignoring the pain that stabbed through her loins as her body was forced to take him. It kept her in the moment, kept her face rubbed in the humiliation as she was violated on camera, _again_ , made sure she felt every thrust, every yank of her hair, every drop of hot semen spraying across her ass and lower back as he pulled out of her at the very last moment, leaving her body unfulfilled and her head a whirling wreck.

He stepped away from her in contempt, leaving her slumped across the table, but it wasn't long before the next one took his place, his cock just as hot and hard and ready.

~ ~ ~

The second one was rougher, yanking her ponytail as if it were a leash, hammering in and out of her with a rhythmic cascade of filthy wet sounds that she only wished would drown out his sneering voice.

"Weak little Shinra whore." A heavy hand slapped her ass as he fucked her, making her yelp into her silken gag, more from surprise than from a sharp spike of pain that was just another drop in the ocean. " _This_ is what they send to fight the mighty warriors of Wutai? A _woman_? No... a mere girl. Perhaps we have killed all of their _real_ soldiers."

Mercifully, his overdone taunts lapsed as he grew closer to orgasm, collapsing into a chain of lusty grunts and animal growls as his rhythm picked up and his breaths grew short and ragged. It hurt, his ferocity and his sheer size too much for the inexperienced flower girl's pussy to bear, stinging tears painting her face in shimmering trails as he reamed her against the table without mercy, holding her down, hauling on her hair, impaling her again and again.

The worst part was that despite the pain, the degradation, the searing desire in her chest to be _anywhere else_ , Aerith came before he did.

~ ~ ~

By the time the third of them had finished with her, his cum streaked across the flower girl's back to mix with the others' lukewarm leavings, Aerith had ceased all resistance. There was simply none left in her.

That did not suit Scarlet at all.

"Get her untied," she snapped the moment the camera was off, and the man playing the role of the commander hastened to obey, his hands seeking out the knots of Aerith's bonds and working them loose with the expertise of a professional. He hadn't even bothered sliding his softening prick back into the pants of his uniform, let alone wiping Aerith clean, but Scarlet at least reached over to snatch the soaked panties from her mouth, letting them drop to the table in a sodden heap. "You'd best pull yourself together, Aerith. I want to see more defiance than _that_ in the next scene. Torture scenes are about resistance, reactions, not about lying there like a dead fish."

"Go to hell." Even Aerith could barely hear her own voice, the words croaked out through a throat raw from screaming. "N-no more. I'm done."

The moment the ropes were drawn from the fierce pink grooves they had bitten into her skin, Aerith pushed herself to her feet with her shaking arms, dignity but a memory... only to find herself slammed back down by a red-nailed hand at the back of her head.

"You're done when we say you're done, and I say it's only 8:45." Stars danced before Aerith's vision as fresh pain rang through her skull, but Scarlet's voice was still clear as day, perhaps because it was snarled directly into her ear. "How many times do we have to go through this? You're _mine_ , you little bitch. Unless you want me to forward a certain tape to your mother?"

Too stunned to form an answer, Aerith stared at the quaint wooden wall, clawing her fingernails into the table. 

"I'm going to make a special cut, just for her." Never a fan of being merciful, Scarlet hissed the words into Aerith's ear as she held her pinned, gripping the base of the flower girl's chestnut ponytail. "We'll open with Irida fucking you with her strap-on, just to make sure she never gets that image out of her head, even if she turns it off right away. But if she doesn't, if she's too distraught, watching the screen with wide, disbelieving eyes, I think she'd enjoy seeing the way your face looked just now, while you were taking cock number three for the morning. Or maybe how you looked on your knees, eating out that slut Tifa, or even you and me together..."

Her ruby lips slashed a smirk across her face when Aerith sobbed.

"Oh, you _don't_ want that?" The weight on the flower girl's head eased, and heels clicked against the wooden floor as the blonde harpy stepped back, cold blue eyes watching her every move. "Then _stop whining_ and limber up for the next round. And put those panties back in your mouth, and keep them there. You seem to need a reminder of who is in charge here."

For the first time, as her fingers clumsily grabbed the sodden silk underwear and forced the horrid bundle back into her mouth, Aerith considered the third option of taking her chances in the perilous Midgar wastelands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, following on from the notes at the top of the page... I'd always intended to write this scene, but it didn't occur to me until I hinted at it in the last chapter and somebody had a problem with it that I had marked this story as only F/F from the beginning. I don't really like adding tags to a story unless the relevant content is already a part of it, but I realize that maybe some readers of this story aren't into the M/F stuff. I did consider either posting this part as a separate story or missing it out entirely, as I had not added a M/F tag to this story until now, but ultimately I decided I wanted to keep it and just add a warning at the top of the page. As I said up there, this is the only chapter of the story that will feature M/F.
> 
> It likely won't be an issue again, as after Honeybee is finished (nearly there) I'll be aiming to post either single-chapter stories, or multi-chapter stories posted all in one go.


	10. Hearts

"Where. Is. Your. Hideout?"

Aerith had lost track of how many times the question had been asked. She could no longer remember which of the two women the voice belonged to, or how long it had been since they had replaced the men, or who she had suspected that they were behind the demonic white masks that covered the entirety of their faces, only black hair long on one and short on the other hinting at their identities. They wore matching clothing, neat black kimonos that even Aerith recognized as Wutaian, a uniform that wasn't a uniform, but Aerith only caught flashes of their garb occasionally, when they allowed her to come up for air.

She barely cared. The flower girl was utterly numb, and not just mentally. The freezing water in the wooden tub before her had seen to that.

Her wrists bound crossed behind her back, her legs bent and tied thigh to calf to keep them that way, Aerith had been forced to kneel at the side of the tub by the masked women, kept down by the longer-haired one's hands, warm and firm on bare shoulders. They had asked the same question of her yet again, and again she had been able to offer them nothing...

Her head had been forced beneath the water before she could finish her sentence.

She had been far from warm after being naked in this gussied-up basement for so long, but the shock of the frigid water against her skin had hit her hard. They held her down as she thrashed beneath the surface, riding out the churning and splashing of her desperate attempts to escape as terror made a feral animal of her, and only when her lungs were burning and her struggles slowing was she hauled back out of the water by her hair, the question asked again over the sound of her desperate gasping.

Of course, her reward for her choking silence had been another dunk into the same freezing tub, and another, and another, holding her down in the icy cold until her lungs screamed for mercy, over and over...

Until...

"Think she's had enough."

Water leaking from her ears, her whole body shivering as freezing liquid streamed down her face and dripped from her hair, Aerith barely comprehended what the woman was saying and didn't care, simply savoring the opportunity to gulp in the air they had denied her for so long. Primal instincts had taken over for rational thought long ago - she lived from moment to moment, dealing with everything they did to her one dunk, slap, thrust at a time, the past forgotten and the future irrelevant.

It was as if they had already drowned the flower girl from the slums, and continued to torment her corpse.

"Not yet." Scarlet's voice was the only one Aerith's muddied mind could clearly distinguish from the rest, even if she were having trouble putting the syllables together into words she could understand. "Leon's fixing the angle so we can get a better view, so take a break for a minute, then we keep going."

"Hey..." A different woman this time, but which one of them it was, Aerith couldn't tell. Of course, it hardly mattered which of her torturers was which - they treated her with the same vicious disdain that the men had, as if she really were as far beneath them as they pretended. "If we keep going, we might kill her. We don't do snuff films."

"Nor do we." Scarlet's voice was as frigid as the water dripping from Aerith's face back into the tub. The flower girl couldn't see her, for to open her eyelids would be to invite in the flood, but there was no mistaking her voice. She could _never_ forget it. "Here. Underwater materia. It'll make the scene less realistic, but make sure she holds onto it and she'll be fine."

The lengthy pause as feet padded against the matting finally allowed Aerith to catch her breath in a clutter of shuddering coughs. She was alive. Somehow, she was still alive. No matter what they said, it had felt like they were genuinely trying to kill her, and _nothing_ , no amount of shame they could heap upon her, was worth her life. She had to get _out_ of here, out of _this_ , before they murdered her and threw her body in one of the endless dark crevices that Midgar was so teeming with, but her arms were still strictly tied behind her back, her legs still bent and bound, and the idea of asking them nicely to untie her was so ridiculous it almost made the reeling flower girl burst into gasping laughter.

A long moment passed in silence, seconds for Aerith to remember just how deathly cold she was, nude and soaked in freezing water... and then one of the women - the older, she discerned, spoke.

"She won't keep hold of it, will she?"

"Probably not," the younger's sharp, shrewish voice responded, and Irida's visage floated to the forefront of Aerith's mind. It was her - she was sure of it now. Did that mean... well, the older one sounded a little like Laurin, but it had been weeks since she had last seen her, plenty of time for her memory to dull. Then again, Laurin did have black hair... Irida didn't the last she had seen, but her blue hair was obviously dyed...

"Hey, I've got an idea!"

The malicious chirp - _definitely_ Irida - made Aerith lift her head, vivid green eyes searching through wet strings of chestnut hair, just in time to see one of the masked women step around behind her, out of sight, the other woman's hands on her shoulders keeping her in place as she did. Whispers were exchanged, a dirty little chuckle making Aerith tense up... and something smooth and warm and rounded pressed against the pucker of her ass, the small purple orb forced inside before Aerith could so much as protest.

"That ought to keep her breathing," Irida sneered, and Aerith didn't need to see beyond the short-haired vixen's demonic mask to know that she was smirking victoriously.

It didn't hurt. It was uncomfortable, deeply embarrassing, but the materia was thankfully too small to leave her in any pain, its gentle heat infusing her whole body with a gentle tingling. What it was doing to her she didn't know, but she had to fight the needling urge to push it back out, clenching up to keep a grip on the little orb in the desperate hope it could protect her...

She only hoped the Planet would forgive her for profaning one of its gifts in such a disgusting fashion.

"I guess she's used to taking toys up the ass," Irida observed behind her devilish disguise as Aerith closed her eyes and forced herself to bear yet another humiliation, shivering naked and tied with a materia forced inside of her asshole, and all with a camera trained on her face, soullessly seeing. Recording. "Maybe later we can see exactly how much we can fit up there."

"That's not on today's schedule," the older woman chastened her, and Aerith was certain now that it was Laurin behind the mask, for all the good it did her. "You can always make a pitch to Scarlet and the writers when we're done for today, but you may need a more convincing proposal than 'shove things up her ass'. Now, I think we are ready to resume?"

"Yeah, we don't have all day," Leon chimed in from the sidelines, the first he had spoken in a long time, an unwelcome reminder that the unpleasant cameraman was there. "Well, I guess we do, but I'm due a break soon, and I intend to collect. Ready to roll 'em?"

Scarlet nodded. "Do it. And if the materia comes out of her, shove it back in. She's popular and she's no good to us dead."

Murmured acknowledgement, and then everything was dark and wet and hellishly cold once more.

~ ~ ~

"Would you believe Wutaian porn actors are hard to find in Midgar?"

Sliding the demon mask from her face, Laurin seated herself next to the trembling Aerith on the floor of the foreign-themed dungeon, an almost friendly look on the dark-haired woman's lovely face, as if she hadn't just spent the best part of the last hour half-drowning the flower girl. "So, that's why the masks, and the helmets on the guys. The viewers might guess, but there's only so much we can do with the budget we've got."

Aerith said nothing. There was nothing to say. They had untied her and wrapped her up in a fluffy white dressing gown, given her a warm drink and a passable imitation of a meal, even let her take the materia that had let her breathe beneath the water out of her ass, but treating her like a human being now after fucking and torturing her all morning was too little, too late, to raise a smile from her. The knowledge that they still weren't even done weighed heavily on her shoulders, crushing her spirit beneath.

"Oh, don't be that way." Laurin frowned at her, planting her chin on her folded fist. "You may as well take kindness where you can get it. It tends to be in short supply around here, especially for girls like you who don't want to be here."

This time at least Aerith looked up at her, but only sullen hostility resided in her eyes.

"I know you don't want to be here, hon, but you're going to have to suck it up." Laurin looked her in the eye, matter-of-fact. "You don't have to enjoy it, but who does enjoy their jobs outside of the top levels of Shinra HQ? If you're a natural dominant like me or if you're a tangled ball of sadism and masochism like Irida you can have plenty of fun here, but if you're not into this... just remember you'll get paid a hell of a lot more for today, with how long you'll be here. We all will."

"I don't want their money," Aerith hissed, clutching her knees close to her chest.

" _Take what you can get_ ," Laurin repeated, stubbornly holding her gaze. "If you're getting tied up and fucked for hours against your will, you might as well keep something out of it besides your reputation with your family. The sooner you accept it, like Tifa, the more you might learn to like it. Sex isn't bad, and some girls even like being tied up and tortured. Who knows? Maybe if you let yourself relax..."

A pointed cough. "You're being awfully chummy with a girl you're about to tie up and torture yourself," Irida noted, standing over the two of them with hands on hips, her mask still mercifully hiding her face.

"I was _trying_ to soften her up for that." Laurin sighed, her hands dropping to the obi of her forbidding black kimono. "I suppose I had best undress. Why they want us naked for this scene I don't know."

"Uh, because it's porn?" Irida shrugged. "You're naked all the time, it's not a big deal except for our fairy princess here." A glance down at Aerith, fierce blue eyes staring into hers through the holes of her monstrous mask, before returning to Laurin as the older woman climbed to her feet. "We have to keep our masks on, right? That's pretty kinky." 

Laurin pursed her lips as she slipped the thing back over her face. "I'm glad somebody thinks so. Come now, Aerith, up you get. Robe off, hands together, and no complaining."

~ ~ ~

Since the moment Aerith had first stepped into a Honeybee dungeon, she had dreaded the whip.

It had terrified her, more than restraints and gags, more than dildos and riding crops, and she had lain awake in her bed some nights, dreading what the lash would feel like against her skin when they finally decided they wanted her whipped. How it would crack through the air, cut her skin and paint her red. How much it would hurt.

The whip Laurin had chosen hadn't made Aerith bleed, but she had not been wrong about the pain.

They'd strung her up by her wrists in the middle of the room, naked and defenseless, and asked the same question of her again, and a few others that she couldn't answer for variety. They'd circled her like sharks, both Laurin and Irida hidden behind their masks and nothing else, their naked bodies on show for the camera from every angle they could ever want.

Then, Laurin had selected her whip, and she hadn't been shy about using it.

Aerith had not been made to bleed, but her back, her legs, her chest were now lined with thin red marks that stung as if they truly had cut deep. Her breasts and ass had not been spared - the latter, in fact, had been specifically targeted at Irida's goading, the younger girl making up for being denied the use of the whip by running her hands over Aerith's suspended body, suggesting targets for the lash that Laurin had happily followed up on. Over and over it bit into her flesh, sometimes finding fresh skin to redden, sometimes landing on the very same spot as before, turning a cry to a howl.

She had long since run out of screams. She had cried at first, but after the rape and the drowning she had suffered through, the flower girl had nothing left. She was done. Empty.

"We are not going to stop until you answer our questions." It was harder now for Aerith to reconcile the Laurin she had shared an almost normal conversation with and the masked monster at her back, but they were one and the same, her voice betraying her. "Surely even an ignorant eastern girl would understand that. Tell us the truth and we will let you down. We even have a restore materia for you."

Aerith said nothing, her head hanging low, her body a web of fire.

"She isn't going to give in." Irida's fingers glided across Aerith's stomach, nails scraping like talons. "The Shinra train their troops to resist interrogation, just as we do."

"She will tire." The whip at her side, Laurin stepped around to Aerith's front and captured her chin, lifting the flower girl's hanging head, brunette hair draping lank over her weary face as vacant green eyes looked back at her. "They always do. Nobody can live like this forever."

She stepped back and released Aerith's jaw, urging Irida away from her with a hand on the younger girl's shoulder.

"We just need to hurt her more."

The whip slashed out, twice, belting a vicious red cross across Aerith's stomach, and the pain sent the beaten flower girl spiraling into darkness.

~ ~ ~

Her bonds were gone when she woke on the floor of the dungeon, naked and swaddled in blankets, but the red marks left behind on her pale body by rope and whip remained, their steady burn welcoming her back to the world she had wanted to leave behind.

"You're awake. Good."

A feminine voice parted the warm haze that had seized Aerith's mind, guiding her back to herself from above, and the flower girl let her eyes crack open, reluctantly accepting the maze of pain woven across her flesh as Laurin coaxed her into alertness...

No. It wasn't Laurin at all.

Sharp blue eyes stared down at her, blonde hair and a crimson dress blurring into being as Aerith blinked the last of her drowsiness away. Scarlet, arms crossed, a frown on her ruby lips, as beautiful and frigid as an ice sculpture. "How do you feel?"

Aerith almost fainted again. Or was she still asleep? Scarlet, _Scarlet_ , was asking after her well-being? "Hurts..."

"I'm sure it does. Can you stand?"

Was that... sympathy in her voice? It was hard to tell, and Aerith's exhausted mind was incapable of figuring it out. All she knew was that she _didn't want to_ find out if she was capable of standing... but she didn't want to be raped or tortured, either, and the memories of just how she had collected the blazing aches crisscrossing her skin beneath the blankets were slowly filtering back into her head, turning her stomach and threatening her eyes with tears. Slowly, gingerly, she planted her palms against the floor and strained to pull herself to her feet.

Scarlet watched her awkward efforts without emotions, but when the flower girl faltered, she breathed an exasperated sigh and extended a hand. "Come on. Up."

Aerith hesitated, her mistrust obvious, but she took the offered hand and allowed Scarlet to help her to her feet, the warmth of the blankets falling away from her naked skin as she steadied herself, her eyes scanning the room. The camera was switched off and Leon was nowhere to be seen - and nor was anybody else for that matter. Two demon masks sat discarded on the table amid bundles of rope, a whip untended atop the pile.

Was it over? How long had she been out?

"I suppose that was too much for you." Her garish lips compressed into a frown, Scarlet looked Aerith over, from her bare feet to her disheveled hair and all of the wan, red-striped skin between. "We will film the rest of the scenes for this one on Friday. 11am sharp. I suggest you keep your schedule clear."

A chill seized Aerith's heart, more deathly cold than the freezing water had ever been. "S-still...?"

"You should be grateful I sent the others home early." Scarlet glared down her nose at Aerith, as if her loss of consciousness had been entirely her own fault, and nothing to do with the whip or the woman Honeybee paid to wield it. "I will be deducting a quarter of your pay, of course, but I'm certain a slum rat like you will still be thankful for every coin. _Friday, 11._ Don't be tardy."

Friday. Friday this week. Aerith swallowed. "But... that's... m-ma'am, my mother... she needs to go for treatment that day. For a week, on the Plate. I... I can't..."

To her surprise, that... actually gave Scarlet pause. The blonde mistress touched a finger to her lips, considering, turning that over in her head. 

Did she have a heart, after all? 

"Hmm..." Still thoughtful, Scarlet chewed on her ruby lip. "I'll be in touch on Friday morning, Aerith. You may go for now. You will find your clothes and your payment in the changing room, and a restore materia if you feel you need it. Go on, now."

Aerith didn't need to be told twice. Somehow finding the strength to walk out of the dungeon, she made her way out into the hallway, arms clutched around her red-striped breasts, desperately hoping that nobody was around to ogle her before she could change back into her clothes.

A shape shifted in the shadows of the corridor, and the flower girl froze on the spot, wild-eyed... but to her relief, the familiar features of Tifa emerged from the darkness, downcast and grim. She wore leather, a short skirt and jacket and belt and boots that looked like they had been pilfered from the set of a cowboy film, a wide-brimmed hat slung behind her shoulders to complete the image, a white undershirt barely constraining her bust. Her long brown hair was as messy and disarrayed as Aerith's, and there was a noticeable pink mark across her cheek, as if she had been slapped there, and hard.

"...Hey, Aerith." She stared for a moment, then dropped her deep red gaze, refusing to look the flower girl in the eye. "Hope you're doing okay."

The searing stripes still lining Aerith's body all over told the story for her, but she gave a tiny nod, not knowing what else she could say. "Are... are you?"

"I really don't want to talk about it." Still averting her gaze, Tifa turned her back on Aerith and pushed open a door at the side of the corridor - the same changing room Aerith herself had used, where her clothes and money were waiting.

Aerith let her have it, opting to stay out in the corridor of a porn studio, naked and shivering, rather than share the dressing room with her. Tifa plainly needed space, and she was certain that she didn't _want_ to know what the other girl had been through to make her act like this, when she had already been through so much more then Aerith had.

Nor did she want to talk about her own experiences with her, or with _anyone_. She would need the comfortable shield of numbness that had settled around her heart to remain intact if she were going to make it home without breaking down in tears. At least when she was out of this place she could leave what happened here behind, forget about the double life they had forced upon her and be Aerith again.

If that were even possible anymore.


	11. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do imagine Aerith's house being a little bigger than the one presented in the original game. Not a lot bigger, but not quite a shoebox, either.

"Aerith! A friend of yours is here!"

She had known it was coming. All week she had been dreading Friday, the day that her mother was to journey to the Plate for the medical treatment that could cure her, the day that Aerith had been meant to accompany her to the expensive facility she was trying to pretend wasn't operated by the Shinra she hated so much.

She didn't even need to descend the stairs to know that the 'friend' at her door would be Scarlet, and that she wouldn't be making the trip to the Plate with her mother after all.

Of course, she had been right; the biggest surprise was that the blonde mistress had traded her usual red dresses for a businesslike blouse and skirt, her normally ponytailed hair flowing loose down her shoulders and back. "She has been doing some work for us," she was saying as Aerith showed herself, "and we _really_ need her to come and cover a shift for today. I tried to call her, but I neglected to charge my phone, and... ah, here she is." The smile she gave Aerith was the warmest she had ever seen on her lips. "Aerith! Can you work this morning?"

"I..." Refusal was clearly not an option. "I... Mom has to..."

"Sweetheart, it's all right." Elmyra Gainsborough smiled wearily at her daughter, as if it had already been decided. "I can see myself to the Plate, don't worry. I've been there before more than once. I just wish you had told me if you were working a new job. Materia stores certainly pay well these days. No wonder you've been so stressed, though..."

"I'm sorry, Mom." Aerith forced a smile. "You're sure you don't want me to come with you?" Planet she felt guilty, but what choice did she have? Knowing Scarlet, she had her phone in easy reach, a porn video ready to play.

Elmyra nodded firmly. "You're already paying for my treatment. I think I've asked quite enough of my daughter for one week." A pause, fond eyes finding hers. "I'm so proud of you, sweetheart."

~ ~ ~

By the time Aerith had dressed herself for 'work', her mother was ready to depart for the Plate, leaving her daughter with a tight, tearful hug and a promise to be back in a week, only ever a phone call away.

Aerith and Scarlet watched her go, but when the flower girl turned to lock the front door behind her, the older woman's hand grasped her wrist in a menacingly tight grip. "There's no need for that."

Her questioning gaze slowly dissolved into horror. "You don't..."

A wide red smile spread across Scarlet's lips. "It was good of you to tell me about your mother's trip to the Plate. The two of you live alone, don't you?"

Aerith could only nod, feeling sick to her stomach.

"There's no need for you to go all the way to the dungeon." In that moment, Scarlet looked more savage and dangerous than anything lurking in the Midgar wastes. "Home movies have their own quaint appeal, don't you think?"

"No..." Gathering strength that she didn't even know she possessed, Aerith lifted her chin, pressing her back against the wooden door of her house. This wasn't the Honeybee dungeon. She was surrounded by flowers and sunlight here, the gentle trickle of the nearby stream, the cleanest place in all of Midgar. Her place, not Scarlet's. "No. Not here. I won't... we n-need to film the other half of... of last time, right? So we need the dungeon."

"That room is in use today." Scarlet swooped in to corner Aerith against the door, her face just an inch from the flower girl's staring her down with those ice blue eyes as sweetened breath clouded against her face. "I've made my decision, Aerith. Open the door and get inside so I can call Leon and the others."

 _Leon? Others?!_ Just when Aerith thought that her heart could sink no further, Scarlet found new depths to drag her down into. "Please... no. I mean... no. I won't do this. Not here."

"Do you _really_ want your mother to find out your little secret?" Scarlet's cold eyes bored into hers, devoid of empathy. Devoid of anything. "She seems nice. Proud of you, she said. I wonder how proud she would be if she knew were the money for her little trip to the Plate came from. If she knew what kind of wares you were _really_ selling. Although you certainly had some interesting ideas about things that could be done with a materia-"

" _Stop it!_ "

Aerith slammed her fist against the doorframe, eyes narrowed to hateful slits, and Scarlet did indeed pause, taken aback.

"My mother is the kindest person I know." It felt like her chest was going to crack under the pressure of her fear, but Aerith straightened, injecting her voice with confidence she didn't feel. "She'll forgive me. She'll understand. She's-"

"Will Zack?"

This time it was the world that seemed to freeze around her. "...What?"

The gleam in Scarlet's eyes was of victory, her pearly white teeth and ruby red lips forming into the grin of a predator that had cornered its elusive prey. "Zack Fair. SOLDIER, Second Class. 21 years old. Born in Gongaga on the Western Continent, currently deployed to Nibelheim. Your boyfriend, if I'm not mistaken."

Aerith felt as if she had been drenched in ice water again. Her stomach twisted, her knees threatening to buckle beneath her. "How.... how did..."

"I know all sorts of things," Scarlet purred, leaning back into Aerith's space, forcing herself to press her spine against the door. "I have connections in the Shinra, and the Shinra know _everything_. That means I also know everything." Her ruby lips moved in close, closer, brushing their warmth against Aerith's ear. "How do you think your little soldier boy would like it if his next mission briefing contained a few... special features? An extra little video or two?"

Aerith closed her eyes tight, blocking out a world that had decided to wobble and waver around her. She knew things about Zack that even _she_ didn't know - his rank, where he was deployed. If Scarlet could get to even him...

"Is that the sound of you inviting me in?" Scarlet's breasts brushed her own, pushing against her chest as the blonde witch leaned in close, her voice husky and heated in Aerith's ear. "I think you just did. Open the door, Ellie dear, unless you want me to fuck you right here."

The door clicked open, and the warmth of the little house guided them in.

~ ~ ~

"Nice place."

The stale scent of cigarettes followed Leon inside the front door of the house, blotting out the gentle smell of flowers that Aerith had grown so used to, but the brunette girl didn't complain, sitting anxiously at the little table at the middle of the living room, head bowed and hands nervously knitted atop the tablecloth. Scarlet was there too, sitting beside her as if she had been invited, and Planet, she _wished_ she could just throw the both of them out, but Zack... her dear Zack...

She couldn't stand the thought of his first glimpse of his girlfriend in years coming from a porno.

The camera slung over Leon's shoulder was smaller than the one he used at Honeybee, but Aerith's attention was quickly snatched away by the sound of footsteps outside, and another silhouette against the door that Scarlet had left open, framed against the truck they had arrived in. More than one. Two... three...

When Irida stepped inside the living room, the flower girl wished that she could crawl under the carpet and die.

The short-haired girl looked around with a wrinkled nose, rolling her eyes when she noticed Aerith looking back at her. Her hair was still black, as it had been days ago when she had tormented Aerith in kimono and mask, though whether it was dye or her natural color the flower girl neither knew nor cared. She was dressed in all black, but ordinary clothes this time, black denim shorts so brief they nearly qualified as panties and a singlet top that would have exposed most of her chest if she had one worth remarking upon. "So this is the princess's castle," she muttered to herself, leaning up against the wall as if she owned it. "Just what I thought."

"You told me you thought she lived in a cardboard box in Sector 6." Of course Laurin was right behind her, the older woman joining the gathering crowd in a house that rarely hosted so many, a black sundress draped over her voluptuous body. "It's a nice little place, really. Try not to mess it up, dear."

As if four of Honeybee's _finest_ hadn't been enough, the final person to join them was Tifa, the beautiful bartender closing the door behind her and leaning back against the smooth wood as if she wished she could phase back through it. She, too, was ominously wearing black - leather pants, a t-shirt and jacket - and while Aerith didn't resent her presence as much as she did the others, it was hard not to let the circumstances of her visit taint her feelings on the subject.

Why was she here? Why were so many of _them_ here? Tifa, Scarlet, Leon, Irida, Laurin, and herself...

She was glad that her mother didn't have to see her living room filled with these people.

"Okay. Some of you already know what's going on, but let me set the scene." Placing her chin on her folded hands, Scarlet looked across the table at each of them in turn, though she spared no glance for Aerith. The snub of being ignored in her own home stung the flower girl more than it should have. "Since we have the use of Aerith's house, we're going to film a little home invasion scenario. A mother and daughter, taken prisoner in their own house and made to do _unspeakable_ things with their captors. Doesn't that sound like fun?" An insidious smirk, met with reptilian smiles from both Irida and Leon, raised eyebrows from Laurin, and a dispassionate shrug from Tifa. "Naturally, Aerith will be playing the innocent young daughter... and since her real mother is _currently unavailable_ , Laurin will be playing that part in her stead."

Aerith flinched, disgusted beyond words, but there was no point in protest. They would only laugh in her face. 

"Isn't she like twenty?" Irida had no such problem with piping up, a scornful look on her shrewish face that was for once not aimed at Aerith. "And you're thirty-five? Doesn't that mean you were slutty enough to get knocked up when you were, uh... fifteen?"

"We're all sluts here, dear." The vixen's barbs could not prick Laurin's composure so easily, a slight frown her only concession. "Besides, Aerith could pass for eighteen, easily."

"And you could pass for forty," Irida added with a lifted eyebrow. 

Laurin's frown deepened, but before she could respond, Scarlet waved them both into silence, standing from the table and flippantly gesturing to Aerith. "Enough. Aerith, you will show me your room, and I will dress you properly for the occasion. Laurin, I'm sure you can find something appropriately... housewife in her mother's wardrobe."

Of _course_ they had found another level on which to violate her. Her last sanctuary, the only place in the world she had _ever_ felt safe since she was a little girl, and they were going to take it from her. Taint it, forever. Ruin it like they did everything else.

She felt numb as she reluctantly led Scarlet and Laurin up the stairs, leaving the others to prepare in the living room unsupervised. Two worlds were crossing over, separate no longer, the final barrier between her twin lives crumbling to ash in her hands. Grim, nauseous certainty that soon her secret would be secret no longer hovered over her like a guillotine waiting to fall. She had been a fool to think she could keep the truth hidden. Her mother was going to know, _Zack_ was going to know...

Everyone would know she was a whore.

They reached the top of the stairs, and Laurin ventured into Elmyra's bedroom on her own, closing the door behind her, Aerith mentally apologising to her mother as she showed Scarlet to the adjacent room. Her room. Her safe place. At least her mom would never know that somebody else had been in her private room, going through her things, wearing her clothes...

"Hm," was the sum total of Scarlet's observations regarding her bedroom, though Aerith was miserably certain that Irida would have more to say when she inevitably invaded this precious place. Red heels clicked against the familiar floorboards as Scarlet made her way to Aerith's closet, flinging the doors open and running a critical eye over the contents. A lot of pink. A lot of dresses. A lot of garments where the two traits combined. Not her most beloved pink dress, of course - Scarlet had destroyed that long ago, and as her red-nailed hands sifted through her clothing, the flower girl wondered which of them would be ruined by the time the wicked mistress and her underlings were done.

"This one."

The dress Scarlet picked out of the closet was one that Aerith hadn't worn in years, not since the peaceful, joyful days she had spent with Zack. A soft blue, sleeveless, with a pleated skirt that fell to her knees and a little collection of pink flowers stitched into the left shoulder, she had long since outgrown it, particularly in the chest area, but she had never found it in her heart to give it away. The dress simply meant too much to her.

Now Scarlet's hands were all over it, dirtying the soft fabric with her wicked talons, and there was nothing that she could do but desperately hold down a scream.

"Innocent. Pretty. Suits your image." The blonde intruder nodded, then crumpled the dress into a haphazard ball and threw it to Aerith, the flower girl clumsily catching the bundle of cloth and straightening it out before it could crease. "Put that on. And..."

To Aerith's horror, Scarlet's next destination was the dresser beneath the window, and it did not take her long to locate her underwear drawer and begin her investigation. Forced to stand by as a woman she despised pawed through her underthings, judging each item she picked up and discarding them with a sneer or a sigh, the flower girl felt a hot blush of embarrassment surge across her face. Why this was so mortifying when the bitch had already raped her, she didn't know, but it was, and she found herself unable to look, her sullen green eyes training on a familiar warp in the floorboards.

"These too." Finally settling on something she liked, Scarlet returned to Aerith's side and presented her with a bra and a pair of panties, both white with pink lace trim, piling them on top of the dress in her arms and staring at her expectantly. It took a moment for Aerith to notice that the lace wasn't the only pink to be found in the pile, and her heart twisted as her fingers drifted against the softness of a ribbon - _her_ ribbon, not the cheap knockoff Scarlet had given her weeks ago. "Hurry up and change. You're keeping everyone waiting."

It was pointless to ask for privacy, the hard look on the blonde fiend's face daring Aerith to ask, firmly crossed arms over the front of her crisp blouse spelling the answer out before it was sought. Ignoring the heavy lump in her throat, she undressed without ceremony, tearing off clothes and underwear as quickly as she could, donning panties and bra and finally the soft blue dress she had once loved so much. It was tighter on her now, her fully grown breasts testing the low-cut bodice as she had suspected they would, but it fit her still, memories of happier days blooming in her head as the skirt drifted around her knees and the straps nestled against her shoulders.

Zack had loved it when she wore this dress. If only he could see her now, wearing it for Scarlet instead. For an audience who were more interested in watching them strip it off of her.

~ ~ ~

Laurin was already downstairs by the time Aerith and Scarlet returned, the long green dress clinging tight to her voluptuous form unmistakably from Elmyra Gainsborough's wardrobe. She seemed no more pleased about it than Aerith, picking at the buttoned front of the dress with a frown on her irritated face. "God, that woman has some dowdy clothes. You should have seen her underwear. Not in this lifetime."

"What, you don't want to be authentic?" Leon was grinning at her, his camera already set up on a miniature tripod on a stool at the edge of the room. "I can hold onto your panties for you if you want to go upstairs and swap them over."

Aerith's hands balled into fists. What right did these people have to be _enjoying themselves_ so much? They were invading her home, going through her things, preparing to _rape_ her, and they were acting as if they were goofing off in a bar after work. Irida was sitting backwards on a chair at the table, grinning along with them, and even seeing Tifa scowling at them from her place alone in the kitchen didn't make her feel any less alienated. She was a prisoner in her own home, and the Honeybee dungeon had never looked so appealing.

"I suppose that's fine." Appraising Laurin with none of the sadistic relish she had taken in looking the newly dressed Aerith up and down, Scarlet clapped her hands, instantly collecting the attention of all present. "First scene; the break-in. Aerith, Laurin, sit down at the table, talk. Aerith, Laurin knows how to guide the conversation, but I expect you to have a normal chat as if you really are mother and daughter. Be convincing. Every time we have to re-shoot a scene, I'll hurt you just a little bit more." She smiled. "Tifa, Irida, upstairs with me. We'll come down at the appropriate time, so I will expect you to act suitably shocked. The more authentically you plead the less I'll have to hurt you in the next scene, so consider that encouragement to put an effort in. Leon, are you ready?"

"Do chocobos smell like shit?" Leon snapped a lazy salute. "Do your best, girls. I'm _really_ looking forward to this one, and I know I'm not the only one."

Aerith couldn't help but cringe.

~ ~ ~

Calling Laurin 'mom' was the hardest thing.

They talked about a theater performance that they had supposedly just returned from, Laurin guiding the flow of the conversation as Scarlet had said she would, and an answer was never hard to invent on the spot, her fellow performer never caught off guard by her responses. Whether she was _convincing_ was another matter - she didn't _feel_ convincing, more stilted and nervous, but nobody intervened until the inevitable moment when slight footsteps tapped against the stairs.

It was obviously Irida, despite the black balaclava covering the entirety of her head beyond her mouth and eyes, but the gun in her hand looked real enough that Aerith didn't have to fake her fear. Still, Laurin took the lead, rising to her feet with dark eyes wide and hands pressed over her mouth in an exaggeration of shock. "Oh my... Ellie!"

Aerith bit her lip, slowly standing from the chair in imitation of Laurin, though the expression on her face was more of dismay than of fright. "W-who are you...?"

"Like we'd tell you our names, you stupid bitch," the masked girl hissed, obviously not entirely acting, and the 'we' she had mentioned quickly made herself apparent, a similarly hooded Tifa with a gun of her own. Whether the weapon was real or fake, it made Aerith's heart skid when the bartender pointed it at her.

"W-what do you want...?" Laurin was convincing enough for the both of them, somehow managing to sound genuinely frightened in the face of nothing more than her friend in a ridiculous mask. Surely she knew if the guns were real or not... "We... we don't have a lot of money..."

"Be quiet and get upstairs." Despite her earlier reluctance, Tifa sounded as if she meant every word, her voice sharp and threatening, her grip on the gun white-knuckled. "You two'll make us a lot of gil one way or another. Move it. _Now_. Hands on your heads."

Laurin did as she was told without further prodding, knitting her fingers together atop her head and stepping toward the stairs, passably distraught. Numb, eyes lowered, Aerith followed suit and tried not to dwell on how easily she had let her beloved home become a stage for this sickening pantomime. 

~ ~ ~

Scarlet had changed into an all-black ensemble of tight-fitting shirt and pants by the time they reached the top of the stairs, a balaclava in her hand as she watched Aerith and Laurin paraded up the stairs at gunpoint, and as soon had they reached the second floor they were sent back down again so that they could be filmed seamlessly ascending from another angle, Leon passing them on the stairs with his camera in his arms and a slimy grin on his face.

As the cameraman set up, Irida took great pleasure in explaining what awaited them in the next scene, gleefully reeling off the list of what she and the others were going to do to them when the camera was rolling once more. Her face burning hot, Aerith grew more sickeningly anxious with each increasingly intimate act the vixen detailed, but Laurin seemed completely untroubled, nodding and smiling along, as if such things were simply another day at the office for her.

When Scarlet gave the signal, Irida waved her gun, and the grim procession began anew. Aerith and Laurin ascended the stairs once more, hands on their heads, fear on their faces that only one of the captive women had to feign.

Again Scarlet was waiting for them, but this time she wore her mask over her face, blonde locks streaming from beneath, a cruel grin on crimson lips as she stepped aside for the camera. Leon had set it up in Aerith's bedroom, the steady red light judging as it beheld bed, closet, hallway and all of its occupants, the cameraman himself leering out at them from just beyond the lens's field of view.

"So, these are the ones you picked out, Samantha?" She could have been speaking to either Tifa or Irida - nobody had bothered to tell Aerith which of the two the fake name was supposed to belong to, and the flower girl couldn't find the energy to care. "A mother and daughter? And not bad looking, either. Yes, they'll do nicely..."

"What do you want with us?!" Her voice threaded with artificial panic, Laurin glanced wide-eyed from Scarlet to Tifa to Irida, deliberately ignoring Leon and his camera, the very picture of a terrified hostage.

Scarlet threw her head back and laughed, a ridiculously theatrical _Kyaaaahahahahaaa_ that made Aerith's ears hurt. "Oh, darlings, you belong to _me_ now. You're going to make such _wonderful_ slaves for a very wealthy client of ours in Costa del Sol."

"S-slaves...?" Laurin shrank back in horror, denying her fate with a shake of her head, only to bump into Irida, who shoved her right back in Scarlet's direction. "N-no, please... I'll do what you want, but please leave my daughter alone..."

The more Laurin put her heart into her role, the more Aerith retreated into herself, letting the older woman overact for the both of them. Even had she wanted to match Laurin's performance, the only emotions she could have drawn on right now were the soul-twisting misery and white-hot anger brewing inside her chest, and she doubted Scarlet wanted her to burst into tears on the floor or worse, take a swing at her. She did her best to look upset, far from a difficult task, but that was all she did, trying to melt into the background and let Laurin have the spotlight if she wanted it so damned much.

Unfortunately for Aerith, her silence did nothing to please Scarlet, the mistress's ice-blue eyes hard and sharp like knives as she strode toward the flower girl and took her chin in a leather-gloved hand, fingers snatching painfully tight around her jaw. "Who, this little bitch? She's so precious to you?"

Laurin nodded fervently, hands still on her head as she took a step toward Scarlet in desperate entreaty. "Please don't hurt my baby..."

It stung to be called that by _Laurin_ , but not as much as the backhanded slap that cracked across Aerith's face without warning, sending her stumbling backward with a blaze of stars in her eyes.

"She's not your baby anymore, slut." Scarlet's voice pierced the ringing in Aerith's ears as the flower girl slowly righted herself, cradling her burning cheek, tears blurring her vision that she was sickeningly sure the witch and her camera and her audience would appreciate. "Didn't I _just_ tell you that you both belong to me!? You're not her mother anymore. You're just another slave, and I think I'm going to need to beat that into your thick skull before I let you anywhere near my client. He does have so little patience with the dumb ones."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry-" Laurin blurted, darting to Aerith's side... only to be wrenched away by her long black hair, a startled cry giving way to a sob as Irida's hand whipped across her face.

"Still not getting the message?" Scarlet sighed in disgust, burying her face in a gloved hand. "Fine. Girls, strip them."

The moment she gave the order Tifa's hands were on Aerith's body, muscular arms wrapping around her waist and drawing her close against the bartender's bountiful chest, the scent of hair and breath and sweat invading her space as she stiffened in the masked woman's steely grip. She was far stronger than Aerith, intimidatingly so, her soft breasts pushing firm against the flower girl's back as quick fingers slid down her thighs to the hem of her much-loved dress, her every movement rough and deliberate.

Irida wasn't nearly so gentle with Laurin, and fresh panic lanced her heart as the sound of her mother's dress ripping open accompanied the older woman's sobs.

Tifa gave her no time to dwell on it. Encouraging Aerith to lift her arms with a not-so-subtle shove against her armpits, she stripped the flower girl's dress up and over her head, throwing the innocent garment aside to land crumpled in the corner and leaving her to stand before Scarlet in naught but panties and bra and ribbon. This morning the dress had been a treasured possession, but now Aerith wouldn't have cared if Tifa had torn it to shreds, though she wrapped her arms around her lace-cupped chest in its absence, still as uncomfortable undressed before a camera as she had ever been. She would _never_ be used to this, and nor would she want to be.

"F-filth..." Down to the skimpy black lingerie that had _definitely_ not come from Elmyra's dresser, all lace and frills and silk, Laurin hugged herself in just the same way as her 'daughter', a red mark blossoming across her face. Aerith didn't doubt that a similar blemish stained her own, still smarting from the slap. "You c-can't do this to us-"

"You're about to learn exactly what we can and can't do," Scarlet cut her off, dismissing her protest with a chop of her hand. "Kiss the girl. On the lips."

"W-what...?" Laurin stared, her mouth falling open, and even though this wasn't her real mother Aerith felt her stomach curl at the wrongness of it. At what it represented. Her disgust was painted across her face for the camera, exactly as Scarlet had wanted it.

Scarlet scowled at her, her raised hand threatening another slap. "You heard me. She's not your daughter anymore, she's just another slave, and that's how you're going to treat her. _Kiss her_."

Laurin hesitated, shivered, looked like she was about to be sick, but when she finally accepted her fate and nervously stepped close to her 'daughter', the angle momentarily hiding her face from the camera's view, the piteous reluctance on the older woman's face morphed into the hungry _I've been waiting for this_ look of a ravenous wasteland wolf.

It was gone in an instant, swept from her face like a passing shadow, doe-eyed fear on show once more as she turned to give Scarlet and the audience one last desperately pleading look. An impatient tightening of ruby lips was the only answer she would receive from the lovely blonde tyrant, warning her to get on with it or suffer the consequences, and Laurin didn't dare dally further, her mask of disgust _almost_ convincing Aerith as she leaned in close and pressed her warm, soft lips against the flower girl's.

The kiss was brief and loveless, Aerith giving nothing and Laurin making no demands of her, but the moment their lips parted Scarlet commanded another, longer, with the passion of a lover, and Laurin was only too happy to oblige. Lips seized lips and laid ferocious claim to them, forceful and sloppy, not at all how Aerith expected the confident, sultry older woman to kiss. She knew Laurin wanted it, wanted _her_ , but she was amateurish, hasty, as if she were trying to get it over with rather than enjoy it.

A woman who wanted her, pretending that she didn't but forced to act as if she did. If Aerith had thought about it in any detail it would have made her head spin, but her scattered thoughts were on the messy kiss, the sweet taste of Laurin's hot, greedy mouth, the feel of the older woman's lingerie-clad body pressing up against her own, skin to skin. 

She didn't kiss back. She didn't want to, and she knew that Scarlet didn't want her to, even if Laurin did. She was to be a helpless victim, and so she stood there in silent, blushing shame as a strange woman forced herself on her in her own bedroom, her eyes shut tight, her hands clenched into fists at her sides, painfully aware of what all of the past selves who had shared this room over the years would think of her if they could see her now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was planned to be one more chapter after this, but I'm going to need to split it for length, so I've adjusted the total chapter count from 12 to 13. Both should be posted at the same time, however.


	12. Break

The next few hours passed in a blur of sweat and pain and flesh smacking violently against flesh.

They stripped Aerith and Laurin naked for the camera, tied their hands behind their backs with stockings and hose plundered from the flower girl's drawers, stuffed their mouths with undergarments looted from the same place, and Aerith let it all happen as if it didn't matter, bearing every fresh indignity with sullen resentment as Laurin protested and wept on cue like a professional.

If Scarlet was displeased with Aerith's miserable showing she gave no sign she meant to whip the flower girl into more acceptable shape. Instead, she simply directed Tifa and Irida in their work with clipped composure, ordering them to lay Aerith and her pretend mother across the flower-patterned covers of her bed, facing each other, close enough to kiss.

Gleeful mischief twinkled in Laurin's eyes as she gazed at her disheveled 'daughter', a sign of how much she was enjoying herself no matter what she was forced to pretend. This was all fun to her, barely work at all. If Aerith's hands hadn't been tied, she might have slapped her.

But they were, and that meant that when Irida and Tifa began to buckle troublingly thick strap-ons around their waists over their clothes, there was no escape.

"Make sure their limits are thoroughly tested." Her red-nailed hands stroking idly at the bulky rubber cock strapped to Tifa's crotch, teasing up and down its menacing black length as if it could feel her goading touch, Scarlet kept herself poised and commanding for the camera, an imperious smile on her lips as Irida took up her position behind Laurin. "Our buyer wants to be sure they are fit for his purpose. Don't go easy on them."

"We won't," Irida chirped, her hand sifting through Laurin's glossy black locks, prompting the older woman to shudder and whimper so pitifully that Aerith might have been convinced had she not known the truth behind it.

Planet, Aerith was grateful that Laurin was the one stuck with Irida for this scene.

Still, that left the flower girl with Tifa, and the grim resignation in the beautiful bartender's eyes as she circled back around the bed made plain that friendship or no friendship, she was going to do what she was told. Her friends were counting on her obedience, for Scarlet could easily put them in prison. Tifa had no more choice in this farce than Aerith did, but Tifa wasn't the one bound, naked, with a dildo slowly moving into position against her lower lips...

The sheathing of cold cock in warm cunt was anything but gentle.

She screamed, howling her pain into the panties stuffed in her mouth, but Tifa's body kept her bent over beneath her, a clawing hand in her chestnut hair forcing her to look straight at Laurin. The older woman's face was contorted in feigned, flushed, wide-eyed distress, but she soon disappeared behind a blur of tears as the thick rubber cock spread Aerith open from behind, plunging remorselessly deep, robbing her of the ability to think of anything else.

It was not the first time the flower girl had been taken like this, but the bulk of the thick phallus sheathing itself inside of her all at once was still almost too much. Whatever Tifa's true feelings were, she showed not the slightest concern for Aerith's comfort or even her lubrication, ramming into her once, twice, over and over, hammering her into her own bed, the scent of flower petals giving way to the heavy musk of sex.

Worst of all, her body began to _respond_ in spite of the pain ripping through her. Not much, not enough to alleviate the pain, but enough that she felt herself begin to moisten as the friction tormented her. Her body's way of protecting itself, perhaps - there was no way that _any_ part of her, no matter how primal, could enjoy _this_. It just wasn't possible, she _hated_ every second of this, there was _nothing_ pleasurable about it-

Scarlet's frigid laughter trickled through the storm of grunts and moans and slick wet sounds, as if to mock all four of her puppets as they danced to every beat of the perverse rhythm she was creating.

~ ~ ~

Somehow, Aerith's face found its way between Laurin's legs.

Perhaps Irida's hands clamping around her head to keep her in place had something to do with it, but in the tangle of limbs and bodies the four of them had become, the constant blur of motion and heat and sweat, Aerith had long since lost track of what was happening and why. Her hands were still tied behind her back, but her hair had come loose from its ponytail long ago, her bare thighs slick with her cooling juices. She hurt, all over, from her pussy to her ass to her breasts and face and the ragged remains of her pride, but her rational mind had melted into a discordant haze, fogging her senses until the only thought left in her head was obedience.

She had to obey, or everything was over.

They told her to lick, and she licked, doing her best to shut out the taste and smell of Laurin's already soaked cunt and lapping at it like she wanted it.

They told her to suck, kiss, tongue, and she did as she was commanded every time, complying with the clumsy reticence of a girl whose only sexual experiences had been precisely controlled by somebody else.

They told her to keep going, over and over, holding her down until Laurin howled her release and drenched Aerith's pink-flushed face in cum.

She didn't need to be told to let Scarlet kiss her. There was no fight left in her by the time the golden-haired mistress stepped over to join them, winding sweaty chestnut hair around her fingers and wrenching Aerith into an embrace from which there was no escape, kissing the flower girl until she was desperate for breath.

The three playacting kidnappers barely allowed the exhausted flower girl her a moment to rest, giving her no quarter as they swarmed around her and Laurin, doing as they willed with their tightly bound bodies. Her struggles meant naught to them - they gleefully introduced her shakenly pleading mouth to Tifa's breasts, Scarlet's cunt, Irida's ass, spread her aching pussy wide with fingers and toys alike, used her in so many ways and configurations that everything and everyone blurred into a mess of sounds and smells and pain and sticky wetness. Fucking her into a ruin.

When the frenzied orgy finally came to a breathless end in a tangle of legs and arms and rope, Aerith lacked the strength to do anything but lay there and breathe, her head spinning too violently to construct a coherent though. To feel anything but miserable and on the verge of being violently ill. Everything hurt, everything was dirty, but it was over, it was _finally_ over...

"Leon." Scarlet's voice held none of its usual commanding steel, strained and heated in the aftermath of her own exertion. "Go downstairs, get us some water. Set the camera up down there for the next scene."

 _Next scene?!_ There was _more_?! 

After the pounding Aerith had already taken, even walking downstairs felt like an impossible demand. Her legs would surely collapse beneath her if she attempted to stand, and she felt so utterly drained that it would surely be folly to try. How much could they possibly expect her body to endure? Her mind? She was just an ordinary girl from the slums, not a professional... professional _whatever_ Scarlet and Irida and Laurin were. She couldn't take this.

She tried to say so, but even without a gag in her mouth she could barely choke out a word, her voice hoarse and cracked, her throat sore from screaming. Even if she had managed to speak, she knew without needing to gasp a single word that Scarlet's ears would be deaf to her pleas. If she had cared about Aerith's welfare, they wouldn't even _be_ here.

She lost track of how long she lay there on the bed, dizzily slumped across the flowery covers she had favored since childhood but would now need to throw away, unresisting and limp as Laurin extricated herself from the dazed heap they had still lain in and began to chat with Scarlet and Irida as if nothing had even happened. Leon was gone - she hadn't noticed him leave - and by the time he finally returned the flower girl was feeling no better, no stronger, no more ready for _yet more_ sex she didn't want.

Of course, they didn't ask her nicely when they forced her back downstairs at gunpoint for the camera, her hands still tied behind her back, Laurin stumbling and theatrically sniffling behind her. They didn't even allow her to dress, parading the two of them naked down the stairs and through the kitchen, in front of the camera's ever-staring gaze...

Then outside, only a quick once-over from a still-masked Irida confirming that the coast was clear.

The beautiful house that the flower girl shared with her mother was isolated from the rest of Sector 5, almost a world away despite its relatively close proximity, but as she was bundled out into the slim rays of sunlight that managed to penetrate the Plate, it was all too easy to imagine somebody she knew coming to pay an unexpected visit, some drunken denizen of the darkened slums taking a wrong turn and stepping into a scene from his lustful dreams. 

Someone recognising her unmistakablely distinctive house on video.

As terrifying as that possibility was, it was the truck parked outside the house that occupied most of Aerith's attention. As they waited for Leon to go inside and reclaim his camera, then set it up once again on the outside of the house, the flower girl studied the unfamiliar vehicle, if only to distract herself from the humiliation and the pain that still wracked her shivering body. It was non-descript, unmarked, utterly ordinary, but the fact that it belonged to Honeybee alone seemed to give it a menacing aura that turned her stomach more the longer she looked at it.

Of course, Scarlet ordered the rear door opened. Of course, she ordered Aerith and Laurin hauled inside. There had been little doubt in her mind from the moment she had been led outside that things would go this way, but that didn't make dread's icy grip any gentler as it clutched at her heart.

Perhaps Aerith should have been happy just to get out of view, but the snarling growl that issued from the shadowy depths of the truck chilled her blood to ice, sending all thoughts of reprieves flying from her head.

Yellow eyes gleamed in the darkness, sharp claws grating against the metal floor as _something_ moved through the shadows, towards her.

It was a cat, of sorts, though not one of a like that Aerith had ever seen before. Panther-like, with a bestially jagged head and jet-black fur that helped it effortlessly blend with the shadows, it stalked from the darkened corner of the truck on four cruelly clawed paws, its small, fierce eyes glinting yellow in the dim light. Halfway down its sleek length, a long, black tendril jutted from its spine to sweep the air in its wake, a single alien trait in a creature that otherwise might have been mistaken for an ordinary animal. Even on all fours it was tall enough to reach Aerith's waist, its mouth splitting open to reveal a dripping tongue and an array of small but sharp fangs that were one swift pounce from ripping her apart.

A monster. They had a monster in the truck.

The realisation was accompanied by a lance of sickeningly cold fear that pinned the flower girl to the spot, the instinct to flee as fast as she could overridden by... by she didn't know what. They were going to kill her. All of this - her blackmail, rape, servitude to Honeybee - all of it had been leading up to her gruesome murder by some horrible monster they'd somehow gotten their hands on, and now Scarlet, Laurin, Irida, _Tifa_ , they were all going to _let_ it kill her, she was going to die here and her mother, Zack, they would never know-

The beast clawed its way into her terrified thoughts, snarling, teeth bared, drool sloughing from its monstrous chops. It advanced across the bed of the truck with predatory grace, claws still grating against the metal with every step, never taking its wicked yellow eyes off of Aerith, and the flower girl found she couldn't look away, transfixed, too exhausted to run even if her hands hadn't been tied behind her back and there hadn't been a gun pointed at her and if she had even _cared _what they did to her anymore, the death stalking towards her not entirely unwelcome.__

__The monster hissed at her as it approached, its whole leonine body trembling with the force of its ferocity, its back arching slightly, its hind legs tensing against the floor. It played out as if in slow motion, the black beast readying to launch itself at her, fanged jaw open in anticipation of her throat, and finally Aerith snapped back to reality in time to save herself but her feet wouldn't work, snared to the floor, too late, _too late_..._ _

__Staring, slavering, the beast stiffened its body, gnashed its fangs.... and lowered itself to the floor, curling up like a common housecat._ _

__"Did you see her fucking _face_?!"_ _

__The glittering sharpness of Irida's scornful laughter slashed through the silence, tearing at Aerith's ears as the masked girl stepped into the back of the truck, flicking a switch by the door. Fluorescent lighting mounted in the ceiling of the truck flickered to pallid life, illuminating filthy metal and piles of chains and the feline monster tucked into a neat ball in the middle of it all, completely docile, unconcerned by any of it._ _

__"She really thought we were gonna do it!" Quaking with the force of her cackling fit, Irida propped herself against the wall of the truck with the hand holding her gun, wiping at her eyes with the back of her other hand. "What a stupid bitch! Oh my God..."_ _

__"Yes, yes, I'm glad you're having fun, dear." Laurin joined them in the back of the ominously empty vehicle, her hands still bound behind her with Aerith's now-ruined pantyhose, as unconcerned by her brazen nudity as she ever was. "Of course, it if wasn't for that Manipulate materia in Scarlet's hand, our Aerith wouldn't be the only one fearing for her life, now would she? First you eat pussy, and then pussy-"_ _

__Irida's groan brought the quip to a premature end, the younger girl stripping her mask over her head, making a half-hearted effort to straighten her short black hair with her free hand. "Kinda wish she'd use that thing on people, too. It'd be so much easier to get them to do what we want if they didn't have a say in it, right?"_ _

__"I prefer one's natural reactions to... stimulus." Ascending the ramp at the rear of the truck, a glimmering yellow orb in one hand, Scarlet removed her own mask with the other, golden hair streaming down her shoulders, ruby lips twisting into their characteristically cold smile. "Besides, the viewers can tell the difference. Remember how much they complained that time, Tifa? They only gave it two stars, overall. They said you looked jerky, out of it."_ _

__Standing outside the truck with Leon, quite content to keep her own mask on, Tifa gave no answer, but her dark red glare spoke volumes for her feelings on the subject._ _

__"Fortunately, nobody cares when it's a monster under the materia's effects." Rolling the orb between her fingers, Scarlet cast an icy glance at the curled-up beast, the gentle movement of its silken black fur with its slow, placid breathing the only sign of life it now showed. "Lucky for us, because I don't know how _else_ we would get the damn things to do what we want. Most of them would prefer to kill girls than fuck them, and that's not a market we want to tap into."_ _

__All color drained from Aerith's face, the implication hitting home with the force of a bullet._ _

__They hadn't brought it here to kill her. They had brought it here to have sex with her._ _

__A monster. They wanted to make her have sex with a _monster_._ _

__"We'll start with me pushing her inside; we'll want the camera mounted at the rear so we can get everything in one shot." Uninterested in Aerith's reactions while the camera was off, Scarlet turned to each of her underlings in turn, pointing with the materia as she spoke. "Tifa, stay outside, alert us if anyone wonders over here. Irida, you will keep Laurin on her knees by the door. I'm going to expect some expressive pleading for mercy for your 'daughter's' sake, while Aerith... well, I'm sure your reactions to violent sex with a monster will come naturally to you-"_ _

__"...No."_ _

__Scarlet stopped. She did not turn to look at Aerith. "Excuse me?"_ _

__"N-no." Panic fluttering in her stomach, breath tight in her chest, the flower girl shook her head, unkempt chestnut hair flying about her face in desperate denial. "Y-you can't do this. You can't. I won't do this...!"_ _

__Her lips compressed into a line, Scarlet did turn back toward her this time, sighing heavily, eyes heavy with disappointment. "Yes, you will. We're not giving you a choice."_ _

__Fear twisted in her like a writhing snake, fighting to get out. They couldn't be serious. Not about this. Even _Scarlet_ couldn't want this. "Y-you can't do this! Y-you're crazy, please, no...!"_ _

__"It should be obvious by now that I can do whatever I want to you, Aerith." The icy wasteland of Scarlet's face offered no mercy. "You're my property. If I want to fuck you, I will. If I want you to bend over and let my pet fuck you, you will. You're my bitch, and you know it, so be a good girl and take it. It'll hurt less that way."_ _

__"I-I'll scream." Naked, her hands still tightly tied behind her, screaming was the only option Aerith still had, but it was _something_. "S-someone will come." _ _

___And then what?_ was a question she couldn't bring herself to contemplate. She had to believe that even here in the slums, there was nobody who would see a scene like this and let Scarlet and her gang get away with it. Even the Shinra wouldn't-_ _

__She didn't see the slap coming until it had knocked her to her knees, stars spinning in her vision, pain and the taste of blood in her mouth._ _

__"Oh, you'll scream all right, you little slut." Scarlet was stooping over her, something in her hand that wasn't a materia, the wad of dirty cloth coming into focus as it was stuffed inside of her mouth to stifle her cry of protest. "It won't do you any good, but don't let that stop you._ _

__Dizzy, powerless, tears in her eyes as she struggled not to choke on the thick, foul rag tickling the back of her throat, Aerith yanked at the pantyhose binding her wrists, ignoring the way the thin, tight bands of nylon bit viciously into her skin, putting all of her strength into her last, most frantic attempt to free herself in spite of the impossible odds. Terror flooded her body with adrenaline, strength she didn't know she had, fueling the flower girl's frenzied thrashing as she sought to pull her hands free, spit out the rag, somehow push herself to her feet..._ _

__A long-nailed hand worked its way through her hair, snatching her chestnut tresses back into a ponytail, hauling her up off the floor with strength inhuman for the woman doing the deed. "Get _up_."_ _

__Somehow Aerith's bare feet found purchase against the floor, the room still spinning around her as Scarlet took her arm and dragged her back out of the truck into the light of day. The illumination in this unnaturally beautiful corner of Midgar's slums was nowhere close to the sun's full glory atop the Plate and beyond, but still it dazzled her as it hit her all at once, disorienting her yet further, pantyhose clawing her wrists as she tried and failed to shield her eyes from the glare._ _

__An arm hooked around her waist - Scarlet's arm, pinning her up against Scarlet's body - the blonde's large breasts pressing into Aerith's back and bound arms, a gloved hand stealing across the flower girl's mouth and pressing over her lips to keep the filthy rag trapped inside, keeping her screams muffled to a murmur. She was _far_ stronger than she should have been - another materia, perhaps - and though Aerith struggled against the older woman's merciless grip with all of her might, in her weakened state, with her hands tied and her head spinning, it made no difference. She may as well have been fighting a behemoth._ _

__She held Aerith there as Tifa reluctantly stood aside, as Leon moved in to set up his camera, as Laurin took up her kneeling position beside the truck's rear door, making herself look suitably distraught. Irida joined her, pulling her mask back down over her face, but there was no hiding the malicious glee she wore beneath, her cruel eyes darting to Aerith every chance they got._ _

__None of them were going to stop this._ _

__Scarlet and Irida's complicity in this ghoulish scenario went without saying, and Leon had barely shown a flicker of conscience through all the times he had filmed her, but Laurin had seemed more human than any of them, had appeared to genuinely _care_ about her now and then, and she showed no sign of speaking up for Aerith now, either. No, she seemed to be enjoying herself, not in the least surprised that the creature had been in the back of the truck all along. She had known, and she had let things come this far._ _

__So had Tifa._ _

__Of course, there was nothing the bartender could have done to stop it. Nothing she could do. Tifa was as trapped in Scarlet's web as Aerith..._ _

__But her hands weren't tied. She hadn't been gagged. She even had a gun, if any of the things the women were carrying were actually real. She could do _something_. Why wasn't she doing anything!?_ _

__When Aerith's eyes found hers, questioning, _pleading_ , Tifa could only look away in shame._ _

__"Hey, all set here." It was Leon who finally broke the uncomfortable silence, peering out of the truck's rear entrance and giving Scarlet a casual thumbs-up, as if this was the kind of shoot the grimy cameraman worked every week. "Whenever you're ready, boss."_ _

__"Excellent." Leveraging her death-grip on Aerith's arm, Scarlet began to move toward the truck, forcing the naked flower girl forward with her. Every instinct screamed at her to escape, but with her hands bound there was nothing she could do but stumble forward to her fate, her struggles winning her naught, her muffled pleas going unheeded._ _

__~ ~ ~_ _

__Just like that, the show began anew._ _

__They were all watching her - Tifa, Irida, Laurin, Leon - but none of them intervened, none of them spoke up until the camera was rolling and Laurin fell back into her role, begging through Irida's clamping hand as if she cared for the safety of her 'daughter'._ _

__The monstrous panther was watching her, too. Still curled up on the floor of the truck, its yellow eyes studying her intently, the beast slowly lifted its lithe body into a crouch, silently greeting the flower girl as her bare feet slapped against the entrance ramp. Every move it made was controlled by the materia in Scarlet's hand, but there was no outward sign of the magical control, its movements completely natural for the camera._ _

__Nobody had to exert magical control over Aerith to get what they wanted from her. The flower girl was trembling in terror as Scarlet forced her closer to the restlessly prowling beast, her vivid green eyes wide, her face as pale as paper. She wanted to be sick, but the cloth stuffed inside her mouth made her hold it back; her legs threatened to give beneath her, weak with exhaustion and fear, but she stumbled strickenly forward until Scarlet planted a palm between the flower girl's shoulder blades and shoved, knocking her to her knees without warning, the impact of bone against metal resounding through the trailer in concert with her muffled cry of pain. "Stay down."_ _

__

__

__Scarlet's cold command was the first anyone had spoken since the recording had begun. The sole of the heartless blonde woman's leather boot stamped hard against Aerith's back, forcing her to bend forward, pressing her tearful face and naked breasts against the harshly cold floor of the truck._ _

__Two heavy boots stepped back, and four black paws padded closer._ _

__Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the panther stalked around her, her every shaking breath an eternity. In this unending moment everything was amplified; the flower girl could feel the biting cold air drifting against her ass and her pussy, the bulk of her folded legs beneath her forcing her to lift her hips in offering; the thin grip of the pantyhose wrapped around her wrists, tightening every time she struggled; the staring eyes of observers who surely wouldn't let this grotesque farce go much further, they _couldn't_..._ _

__The sight of the large pink member emerging from the fur between the beast's haunches, thick and monstrously erect, erased all doubt._ _

__This was happening, whether she wanted it or not. It was going to fuck her._ _

__"Time to break you in properly." Scarlet's voice echoed through the trailer as the panther circled around Aerith, sliding out of her field of view, but she could barely hear the words through the thundering in her ears. "We promise our clients rigorous testing of our product. Just stay there-"_ _

__She could feel its hot breath wafting against her ass-_ _

__"And take it-"_ _

__Its fur, rough and coarse, sliding over her hips, her back; its bones beneath, hard and narrow, pressing against her skin-_ _

__"Like a good little slave-"_ _

__Its cock, hot and damp and rigid, prodding against her still-sore pussy, seeking entrance-_ _

__"And this will all be over-"_ _

__She screamed, but it wasn't her scream, wasn't her voice, just sound, high and piercing._ _

__The world turned violet, then blindingly white._ _


	13. Limit

Everything had stopped.

The panther, its fat pink cock nudging against the warm, sore flesh of Aerith's pussy.

Scarlet, standing behind her, icy condescension on her face as ever.

Laurin and Irida, by the entrance of the trailer, playing at prisoner and captor.

Leon, unmoving, hand resting on his camera.

Nothing moved except Aerith, naked and bound on the floor yet the only one free.

She barely comprehended what had happened. All she knew for certain was that _something_ had welled up within her heart, entwined with the fear and despair that had claimed her as the panther's body mounted hers. Born from those dark emotions, perhaps. It wasn't magic, not like one would draw from a materia - it had come from deep within her, as if it had been there all along, waiting for the moment she had needed it.

She couldn't explain it, but that would not stop her from taking advantage of it.

Her hands still tied behind her back, she crawled forward on her bare knees, extricating herself from the panther's clinging body, pulling her pussy away from the thing's monstrous cock as quickly as she possibly could. Spitting out the rag Scarlet had shoved in her mouth, she edged out from beneath the monster's furry weight, forcing herself back to her shaky feet. The beast didn't move even as Aerith broke contact, hanging in midair like a disused marionette, its muzzle open, front paws splayed around nothing, cock jutting from between its hind legs like a fleshy dagger.

Nobody moved. Not the beast, not Scarlet, not Irida, Laurin or Leon. Whatever that violet burst of power had been, it seemed that it had frozen everybody in place but her.

A flicker of movement by the trailer door instantly proved Aerith wrong.

"What in...?!" Tifa stood by the rear entrance of the truck, silhouetted against the muted sunlight, unmasked and gaping at the scene she found within. Stunned, she edged into the trailer, moving into Irida's and Laurin's fields of vision, waving a hand in front of their faces to absolutely no response. "Aerith, what... what did you do...?"

Aerith didn't answer. She staggered towards the light, tears spilling from her eyes, her body shaking with sobs as she stumbled down the ramp and into what passed for daylight beneath the Plate. She didn't know. She didn't care. She just wanted out. Away.

Tifa didn't let her leave by herself. Abandoning Irida and Laurin to their predicament, she jumped out of the trailer, her boots stirring dust as they hit the earth, hastening to Aerith's side and taking her by the arm with more roughness than she had intended. The flower girl stopped in her tracks, stiffening.

She didn't look at Tifa. Couldn't.

The silence stretched on for seconds, five, ten. Finally, Tifa released her hold on the flower girl's arm, licking her suddenly dry lips and slipping behind Aerith's back, taking her bound wrists in her hands. "....Let me untie you."

Aerith let her, sniffling and shaking as Tifa's practiced hands painstakingly loosened the tightly knotted pantyhose, gradually lifting the stretched nylon from the furrows it had gnawed into her skin. She was a mess, disheveled, tearful, her mind swirling like a whirlpool, threatening to drag her into the dark if she let it, and despite the dim sunlight that found her skin through the Plate she was cold, shivering from more than emotion, wrapping her arms around her naked self the instant Tifa had completed her task.

She sank back to her knees in the dirt, sobbing, breaking like glass before the storm.

~ ~ ~

Tifa wanted to hug her. Longed to. 

She didn't dare. Not after she had been willing to stand by and let Scarlet get away with this.

She had wanted to intervene, from the moment Scarlet had told them of her plan to use the monster on Aerith, but she couldn't. For Aerith her unwilling servitude to Honeybee was a matter of reputation, of her family and the people she knew finding out what Scarlet had made her do, but for Tifa much more was at stake. It wasn't just her that was threatened - it was her friends, those who had a lot more to lose than her.

_Barret. Jessie. Biggs. Wedge._

_Cloud._

If the Shinra ever learned what Tifa and Scarlet already knew about them, they would be finished. Arrested at the minimum. Probably killed. Tifa's life would be at stake too, for that matter, but the bartender had given it comparatively little thought, the safety of her friends and her childhood crush meaning more to her than her own ever had.

But for that... she had been willing to do horrible things. Let horrible things happen right in front of her without saying a word of complaint. She was getting used to the abuse, the humiliation, told herself that it was all for her friends, for Cloud...

She had even intended to stand by and _watch_ as Scarlet forced an innocent girl to fuck a monster.

So no, she wouldn't hug Aerith, woudn't comfort her. She didn't have the right. Instead, stricken by guilt, she watched and waited with hands tightened to fists at her side, keeping a wary eye on the back of the truck and the path back to Sector 5. She didn't want to chance someone coming across them now of all times, and whatever Aerith had done in the trailer, whatever it was that had immobilized Scarlet and her friends, she had no idea how long it would last.

Or what the hell she was going to do now.

~ ~ ~ 

The tears felt as if they would never stop, but Aerith forced herself to her feet, wiping at her eyes with her forearm, flicking strands of chestnut hair away from her reddened face.

The trailer was silent and still. Irida stood by the entrance, Laurin in her grip, both of them completely unmoving.

The thought of killing them crossed Aerith's mind, but only for a moment.

"We have to get out of here."

Tifa's voice stirred up a new wave of tangled, whirling emotions, but Aerith forced down the feelings of anger and betrayal that threatened to overwhelm her, calming herself through sheer force of will, if only for her own sake. She had to think. She had to run. She had to... she didn't know what, but time was short...

"Aerith. C'mon." The bartender was staring at her, her deep red eyes staring gravely into hers. "We can't stay here. That... whatever you did won't last forever, right?"

Aerith shook her head numbly. She didn't know, but she couldn't afford to assume that it would.

"Then come on. We're leaving." A cellphone was in Tifa's hand - to what purpose she didn't say - her fingers flicking against the screen with the urgency of the hunted. "I.... damn it, you need clothes, don't you? Uh..." Her fingers stopped, and she darted a glance at the truck - nobody was moving - then at the flower girl's house... then finally handed her phone to Aerith, who took it automatically, unthinking. Without hesitation, the bartender shrugged off the jacket that was part of her kidnapper 'costume', then drew her black t-shirt up over her head, hastily stripping herself to the tight white sports bra that barely constrained her impressive breasts. As Aerith watched in confusion, she draped jacket and shirt over her shoulder and tugged down her tight leather pants, working them down her athletic legs with only a hint of difficulty, flashing her tight black panties to the flower girl as she stooped to pull the pants over her ankles.

"There." A hot tinge to her cheeks, Tifa shot a quick glance at the truck and the pathway, then shoved the pants and shirt at Aerith, taking back her phone in the process. The name 'Barret' had glowed on the screen, but the flower girl hadn't thought to look at anything else, and now she had missed her chance, her arms suddenly full of clothing. "Put those on," the bartender ordered, awkwardly tying her jacket around her waist, hiding her ass and most of her thighs from view. "I'll manage."

Aerith didn't protest, wasting no time in pulling the shirt down over her naked top half, then somehow working her legs into the ill-fitting leather pants, trying her best to ignore the cooling sweat within. It stung her to feel grateful to a woman who had been prepared to let her be raped by a monster, but whatever her reasoning, Tifa was helping her now, when she desperately needed it, and she had nobody else to turn to. She had been bound, naked and cold, and now she was none of those. She would be thankful for what she could get.

Her fingers flying over the screen, Tifa pursed her lips, her face fraught with worry. Finally, she made to slip her phone into her pants pocket, grimaced, and kept the device in hand instead, offering Aerith her other one. "C'mon. We're going to my bar. I'll figure out the rest on the way."

"But-" Aerith glanced at the truck, somehow still silent as the grave. "They'll..."

"Better than getting fucked by a monster." Tifa grimaced, then lowered her hand, biting her lip in thought. Then... "Wait there."

She approached the truck with rapid strides, passing by the frozen Laurin and Irida as she ascended the ramp and disappeared into the belly of the vehicle... only to return a few moments later, clutching a gently glowing orb, brilliant yellow. The Manipulate materia.

"When whatever that is wears off, they can take their chances with the panther." Her face a mask of stone now, Tifa handed the materia to Aerith, who accepted it without a word and took the bartender's offered hand, cold meeting comforting warmth. The flower girl's euphoria was twisting into fear, uncertainty, but despite wearing nothing but her sports bra, panties and jacket tied around her waist, Tifa exuded confidence, determination. Strength.

Tifa ran, and Aerith ran with her.

~ ~ ~

Seventh Heaven was half-full of patrons by the time Aerith and Tifa arrived, but the girl behind the counter was quick to chase them out, weathering the storm of indignation with a smile on her face.

"Jessie." Peering through the narrow window at the outside world, the dismal hues of Sector 7 staring back at her, Tifa closed the rickety blinds and turned to the other girl, releasing a breath she had barely realized she was holding. "Have you heard from the others?"

"Barret and Wedge are cleaning out downstairs." The other girl seemed around Aerith's age, light brown hair bound in a ponytail looser and more fierce than Aerith's had ever been, a red headband tied around her head above sharp brown eyes. "Biggs is securing the secondary location. Haven't heard from Cloud, but..." She shrugged. "You know Cloud. I'm sure he's fine."

What in the world had Aerith just walked into? "Um... Tifa?"

Jessie's attention fell on the flower girl like the blade of a guillotine. "Who's this?"

"A friend," Tifa answered, her attention already back on her phone. "She's in this, too. We're taking her with us. Oh, Aerith, lock the door."

She did as she was told, under the watchful, untrusting eye of Jessie the entire time.

Silence reigned as Tifa tapped at her phone, as Jessie wrung her hands behind the bar, as urgency tingled in the air. Finally, a thin, tinny ringing sound broke the spell, and Jessie checked her own phone, breathing a sigh of relief at whatever was written on the screen. "Biggs says it's all clear. Cloud showed up there, too. We're good."

"Then why the hell isn't he answering his...?" Tifa glared at the screen of her own phone, then breathed a frustrated sigh through her teeth and lowered the device, pursing her lips. "No, Cloud can wait. Jessie, I'm _sorry_."

"Don't be." There was genuine sorrow in Jessie's eyes as she regarded her friend from across the bar. "You've done... more than enough for us. I could never have stomached that shit for as long as you did, Tifa. I don't know how you..." She stopped, disgust on her face, then turned back to look at Aerith, no longer quite as suspicious. A little softer. "Is she...?"

Tifa nodded. "Yeah. She's... Aerith's..." She paused, not quite sure what she was going to say. "She's been through a lot, too."

Distrust turned to solemn sympathy. "I... okay. Well... welcome aboard, Aerith. For what it's worth."

Aerith's head was spinning again. "Aboard what?"

"...You didn't tell her?" The sharpness returned to Jessie's glare as she unleashed it upon Tifa. "Does she even know-"

"There wasn't any time." Peering through the blinds as if she expected to find the bar surrounded - _perhaps she did_ , Aerith thought - Tifa bit her lip, then stepped back and let herself slump against the wall, her hand passing over her dark ruby eyes. "Look, maybe I'm not making the best decisions right now, but we really need to move. If Scarlet's still alive-"

"Still alive...?" Jessie gaped. "What the hell did... I mean..."

Tifa didn't give her a chance to question it further. "If she's still alive, then the second she figures out what happened, we'll have the Shinra crawling all over us. If I'm not _profitable_ for her little sideline anymore..." She shuddered. "She'll remember she's a Shinra exec, and we're all fucked."

_She's a what?!_

Too much was happening at once. Too many hammer blows were falling. The room seemed to tilt around Aerith, light-headedness seizing her, the dim neon lighting in the bar suddenly too bright. 

Then darkness encroached, and Tifa's cry was the last thing she heard.

~ ~ ~

When she woke up, everything had chanced.

Seventh Heaven was gone. Tifa and Jessie were gone. Everything was moving, the dull sound of a growling engine cradling the flower girl as she slowly returned to consciousness.

For one horrible moment Aerith thought she was back in Scarlet's truck, seconds from being fucked by a monstrous panther, but there was no sign of the beast here, no Scarlet, no camera. Her hands were unbound, and she was still wearing the leather pants and t-shirt that Tifa had given her, and beneath her were soft blankets, not hard, cold metal.

She was still in a truck, but this one was smaller, warmer, and the man sitting in the corner, his feet resting on a pile of small wooden crates, was not one she had ever met before.

"...You're awake."

He was blond, spiky hair framing his handsome face, but it was his eyes that caught Aerith's attention most, aglow with the blue fire that only mako infusion could grant. The same process that Zack - _her heart lurched_ \- had been through. Perhaps that was what comforted her, stopped her from panicking at being trapped in a small vehicle with a man she had never met.

"You made a real mess of things."

"E-excuse me...?" Holding her head in her hand, Aerith sat up as best she could, strands of brown hair falling across her face in a tangle. She didn't bother to brush them away.

The man didn't answer right away, just watching her, staring into her soul. Finally, he heaved a sigh and leaned back against the gently rumbling wall of the truck, tilting his head to stare at the featureless ceiling. "That's the third hideout this year we've had to leave. This one didn't even suck."

Aerith fell silent, trying to take in what he had said, but she still didn't have enough pieces of the puzzle to make _any_ sense of this. Hideouts. Tifa's mysterious friends. The Shinra, and Scarlet, who couldn't _really_ be an executive, running a porn business on her spare time. Could she?

"Who are you?" she asked at last, making herself breathe in the warm, if foul air. The last thing she needed was to faint again. "Where's Tifa?"

"Tifa's busy with the others. In a real hurry. I should be there with her, but she told me to look out for you, and she's the customer." The blond man shrugged, as if he didn't really care what happened. "I'm Cloud. Mercenary. The guy driving is Biggs. He's with Avalanche full-time."

Another heavy blow, out of nowhere. Her head reeled.

Avalanche?

The anti-Shinra terrorists, Avalanche?

The ones who blew up the Number 1 Reactor just months ago?

Tifa was...?

No wonder. No wonder Tifa couldn't let Scarlet rat out her friends to the Shinra. No wonder she had been forced to do whatever the blonde witch told her to. _Why_ Scarlet had let terrorists get away with murder just to blackmail Tifa into filming porn was another question, but Scarlet was so supremely selfish that she likely hadn't given it a second thoughts.

That, or she had planned to betray Tifa and her friends the moment she was done with her.

And Aerith had brought that moment forward, she realized, her stomach sickeningly heavy. Tifa had helped her, and in doing so, had brought the fist of the Shinra down upon Avalanche. The man - Cloud - was right. This was her fault.

Her fault that a terrorist organization was on the run.

She didn't know how to feel about that, but at least it kept her from dwelling on anything else.

~ ~ ~

They escaped, in the end.

The new safehouse was located in the slums of Sector 4, too close to Aerith's home of Sector 5 for comfort, but Aerith had only rarely visited despite its proximity, the dire reputation of the area enough to keep even a flower girl used to the lecherous advances of strangers well away.

The first time she felt brave enough to visit the marketplace, sticking very close to Tifa, she rounded the corner of one of the dirty, cluttered shops to find herself face to face with... herself.

Her blood ran deathly cold.

It was an adult video stall, video tapes and discs lining shelf after shelf right in the middle of the sector's main thoroughfare, and it was decorated with posters of women, dozens of them. Irida was there among them, and Laurin, but it was the picture of herself that attracted Aerith's immediate attention, prominently displayed at the front of the stall, wrists chained above her head, a ball gag strapped in her mouth, staring wide-eyed at the viewer.

 _Aerith Gainsborough,_ proclaimed the poster in large pink font.

Not Ellie. Aerith. Her true name, displayed with her face for all to see.

_Scarlet._

The posters were all over Sector 5 as well, Tifa later confirmed. The truth was out, and if her mother didn't know about her daughter's secret career as a porn star by now, she very shortly would. It was done, and there was no taking it back, no hiding it. The charade was over.

She felt no relief, only sickness and crippling shame.

They refused to let her call Elymra, explain herself, and even though she had repeatedly asked, Aerith didn't know if she would have had the stomach for it if they had said yes. The worst-case scenario had happened, and she would never look at her daughter the same way again. Every night she played the conversation that had never happened in her head, over and over, and rarely did it come to anything but her mother disowning her, screaming at her, crying, ashamed.

If Scarlet had been as good as her promise, Zack would know, too, and that she couldn't even bear to contemplate.

So, she hid.

It helped that everyone around her was hiding from something. Tifa. Cloud. Jessie and the rest of Avalanche - Barret, Biggs, Wedge. Terrorists, all, but they took her in, looked after her, and after all she had been through, Aerith was not about to question it. She needed sanctuary, and that was what they gave her.

At least she would never need to act in porn again.

~ ~ ~

Scarlet and Laurin were definitely still alive, Tifa told her eventually, the information falling into her lap thanks to Biggs and his own viewing habits, but Irida had stopped appearing in Honeybee's videos, and nobody knew why. As for Leon, Tifa hadn't cared enough about the cameraman to ask, though the information was not as readily available as it was for actresses, anyway.

She could have asked Jessie, for computer hacking was the young woman's specialty, but there was only one piece of information that Aerith wanted badly enough to ask her.

Shinra's medical records were scandalously easy for her to access remotely, she confided, a smile on her face as she broke the news to a worried Aerith. Elmyra Gainsborough had responded well to the treatment she had recieved on the plate, and was expected to make a perfect recovery from the illness that had sought to claim her. Aerith's time with Honeybee had been hell, but at the least the gil she had made prostituting herself on camera had done _some_ good. Her mom was going to be okay.

Seven crumpled drafts of the letter Aerith intended to write lay scattered around the splintery crate she used for a desk, but she was close to getting it right.

She was still a wreck, in truth. She had been raped, abused, and the marks that Scarlet and Honeybee had left behind on her mind and heart would take time to heal, but one night, when Tifa's hand found hers, Aerith wondered if the tattered pieces of her life might one day make a whole after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I regret that this took so long, but this is the end of the story at last. Thanks for bearing with me so long.
> 
> For anyone confused about what happened at the start of this chapter/end of the last, the chapter titles provide a hint.
> 
> If anyone is interested to know what I'll be doing next, I'll try to update my profile page here with news in the near future, and keep it updated.


End file.
